Nature News

Reporter Kevin Stark, one of the co-authors on a major new sea level rise project from the San Francisco Public Press, talks about the challenges of thinking about and reporting on sea level rise in the Bay Area.

Climate scientist Daniel Swain runs the California Weather Blog, a must-read for weather nerds. He’s most famous, though, for something he did almost as an afterthought: He’s the one who gave the name “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” to the pattern that’s being blamed for our three years of drought.

Phytophthora tentaculata, a new and particularly pernicious strain of dangerous plant pathogens that has been on a federal watch list, was found throughout one of the SFPUC’s restoration sites in central Alameda County.

Phytophthoras, Greek for “plant destroyers,” certainly live up to the name. Once introduced to a location, they can spread undetected in the soil or in water and wreak havoc on crops, nursery stock, and natural ecosystems.

An ecologist argues that the presumed benefits of grazing—if they are real in the first place–can only be realized in small areas and/or result in excessive widespread collateral damage to wildlife, soils, water, and vegetation.

It’s the calochortus lily’s floral display that catches everyone’s eyes: from the pendant snowy drops of the white fairy lantern to the purplish hirsute petals of Tolmie’s pussy ears to the open golden landing pad adorned with rich burgundy splashes of the yellow mariposa lily, the flowers of this genus regularly inspire awe and cause digital camera cards to fill up quickly.

Engaging kids in art is second nature to renowned environmental artist and mom Lee Lee, whose collaborative art tiles project, DEBRIS, sprung out of her concern for her newborn son Thatcher’s future in a world overrun by single-use plastics.

Javier Ochoa Reyes has won Bay Nature’s Local Hero Youth Engagement award for his work at Groundwork Richmond, where he teaches high school-age youth about the importance of trees in urban environments, and works with the students to create more green spaces in Richmond.

Just as demand for locally sourced beef is rising, the ability of local ranchers to produce it is going down. The soaring rents and real estate prices that make it difficult for young writers and families to live in the Mission (or Gilman) District also make it difficult for local ranchers—young and old—to keep ranching in west Marin or southern Santa Clara.

The idea of recording as many mammals as you can see in 24 hours hasn’t caught on the way the birding big day has. But when a team of longtime biologists set out into the field, their efforts netted them some important new information about Northern California’s wild mammals — and a new North American record.

Raptor expert Larry Broderick of Sonoma-based West County Hawk Watch has been enamored of birds of prey since childhood. We swooped in to chat with Larry about his favorite predators on the eve of this weekend’s SF Bay Flyway Festival.

We’re delighted to be able to offer some wonderful wilderness getaways — plus tours of museums, an artist’s studio, days on the water, and much, much more — for our Local Hero Awards Dinner‘s silent auction this year. Proceeds from the auction will support Bay Nature Institute and its programs. Feast your eyes on the items below […]

When hundreds of surf scoters and other ducks wintering on San Francisco Bay were found coated with a baffling “mystery goo” a few weeks ago, San Francisco Baykeeper was one of the first organizations on the scene.

We’ve built our cities right up the edge of the Bay, and it’s a big Bay so there’s lots of low-lying waterfront. Now sea level rise is forcing hard decisions and creative thinking about that waterfront.

On farmland near the Pajaro River, Point Blue, The Nature Conservancy, and a busload of school kids marry an idea about landscape restoration with an idea about the way the people who live, work, and play on that land can – and should — be part of restoring it.

Stuart Weiss, co-founder of the Menlo Park-based environmental consulting firm Creekside Center for Earth Observation, is one of those rare birds who’s managed to connect hard science to on-the-ground conservation on a grand scale. And he started out by just doing what he loves: chasing butterflies! Are you originally from the Bay Area? If not, […]

Jack Harrison, 26, is a wilderness and fly-fishing guide and the lead survival instructor at Adventure Out outdoor school based in Santa Cruz. We caught up with Jack as he returned from a morning of ocean fishing at Stinson Beach. Describe some of the personal wilderness expeditions you’ve taken. I’m an big fly-fisherman. In winter […]

U ntil a few years ago, few people knew about the rare plant communities that persisted quietly in a lightly used city park in the Oakland hills. If people were aware of Knowland Park it was largely because of its proximity to the Oakland Zoo, which sits in a corner of the park and manages […]

Every year, Bay Nature Institute selects three people whose extraordinary work on behalf of conservation and environmental education in the Bay Area warrants special recognition and appreciation. This year’s Local Hero for Youth Engagement is Javier Ochoa Reyes, project coordinator of Groundwork Richmond. This award recognizes an individual, 25 years old or younger, who is making […]

Every year, Bay Nature Institute selects three people whose extraordinary work on behalf of conservation and environmental education in the Bay Area warrants special recognition and appreciation. This year’s Local Hero for Environmental Education is Julia Clothier, Education Director of the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. This award recognizes the achievements of an individual who has […]

Every year, Bay Nature Institute selects three people whose extraordinary work on behalf of conservation and environmental education in the Bay Area warrants special recognition and appreciation. This year’s Local Hero for Conservation Action is Ralph Benson, longtime Executive Director of the Sonoma Land Trust. This award recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions […]

I f you’re going to succeed as a species in this world, you need to get three things right: shelter, food, reproduction. Simple. But it’s the variety of ways in which living organisms go about meeting these three basic needs that gives rise to the mind-blowing diversity of life on the planet—all the shapes […]

Jack Harrison, 26, is a wilderness and fly-fishing guide and the lead survival instructor at Adventure Out outdoor school based in Santa Cruz. We caught up with Jack as he returned from a morning of ocean fishing at Stinson Beach and spoke with him about his wilderness adventures, surviving in the wild, and the importance […]

Field work is supposed to be where ecologists get to play Indiana Jones. The reality with swing-dancing joke-cracking fish-loving UC Davis research scientist Jim Hobbs is somewhat different: wet, muddy, smelly, and mostly involving either waiting for leopard sharks or harvesting leopard shark vomit.

P ier 94 salt marsh is located at the end of a wide road with dirt piled high on either side, past two cement plants and a truck weighing station. It doesn’t seem like ideal bird habitat. From the road, on a gray Saturday morning in November, the area looks abandoned and barren. But there […]

While ocean acidification research often focuses on its impact on shelled animals such as corals or oysters, research is now showing the extent of the problem it will cause for fish like sharks, salmon, and rockfish.

When you’re eyeball to eyeball with a turkey vulture, you wonder how he perceives you. (My “he” is Vladimir, a 30-year-old male, permanent resident of WildCare in San Rafael.) You may think of William Leon Dawson, an early celebrant of California birds: “…when the buzzard sweeps low to bend upon you an inquiring eye, you […]

In the glare of the bright sunshine flooding Duffel Meadow, a pale swath of cattle-trodden grassland near Orinda, several dozen lumpy burlap sacks lie gray and ragged, no more conspicuous than a pile of compost, in two natural swales. But each bag’s straw and wood chip stuffing is threaded with a rich web of mushroom […]

Nature and culture writer Aleta George takes hunting field trips with a noted conservationists — and finds an extended series of lessons about the intimate and indelible connection between hunting and conservation.

Somewhere between animation and photography, Swiss-born Simon Christen has found his happy place: time-lapse photography. His “day job” is as an animator for Pixar Studios in Emeryville. But in his “spare time” he has found widespread recognition through his series of online time-lapse videos, including Adrift, which portrays the mesmerizing beauty of fog flowing over […]

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, an ambitious project to knit together the Bay Area’s diverse ridgeline parks and open spaces. So far, over 340 out of a projected 550 miles of the trail are complete and open to the public. In recognition of this milestone, we invite you […]

For the past decade, the Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies expedition has monitored the ocean waters just west of the Bay Area. Recently, researchers took the boat in search of krill, the base of California’s marine life.

The early fall king salmon spawning run on the Sacramento River is taking place between Red Bluff and Redding, but prolonged drought has led to reduced flows from Lake Shasta and high water temperatures downriver, which could deal many egg nests a death blow.

Marin’s Marine Mammal Center is spreading its reach across the Pacific, and this summer opened a $3.2 million seal hospital in Hawaii that is the only facility in the world dedicated to treating and protecting the Hawaiian monk seal.

Environmental groups gathered in downtown Vallejo over the weekend to mark the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, to ponder the meaning of the word and to filter the concept through the lenses of California’s diverse communities.

This past weekend, a new trail was blazed from San Francisco’s McLaren Park to its Visitacion Valley neighborhood, providing a safe alternative to walking on a busy city street. The skilled squad of workers behind this new trail offered their time and effort for an organization called Volunteers for Outdoor California, or V-O-Cal. We spoke with longtime V-O-Cal project […]

A herd of elk and a grizzly bear make an appearance in Muir Woods in the opening scene of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Would such megafauna stage a comeback 10 years after humans are mostly killed off?

After 12 years of study, an ambitious citizen science effort has recorded population figures for 34 different types of algae and invertebrates at 70 different monitoring sites. Sixty percent of the 4,000 participants have been high schoolers. Their work, scientists say, is a legitimate contribution to marine science.

It’s not “news” to Bay Nature readers that climate change is in the process of giving a serious thwack to living systems. But what’s less well understood is how plants and animals and the habitats they inhabit are moving—and being altered—in response to changing temperature and precipitation patterns.

In a world thoroughly worked over by humankind, wilderness is our term for those places that seem the least altered, the least managed. It identifies the rawer end of a spectrum, with downtown San Francisco on one end and, say, the Wrangell Mountains on the other. But the word is elastic.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Bay Trail, a 500-mile-long trail corridor which traces nearly the entire shoreline of San Francisco Bay. We spoke with Bay Trail project manager Laura Thompson about her efforts to connect remaining segments, and the often herculean task of bringing together all of the necessary funds, resources, and […]

The temperature rises to well over 90 degrees on Mount Diablo these days—hot enough to bake many small plants. But the little green shrubs have just begun to stage their comeback. It’s springtime in the chaparral.

Recently, Bay Area beachcombers have been spotting dozens of mysterious blue jelly-like creatures littering the beaches. What are they, and why are they here? Bay Nature naturalist Michael Ellis explains.

The Bay Area Puma Project team has been collaring mountain lions and monitoring remote motion-sensor cameras throughout the East Bay. It’s not easy tracking the elusive cats, but it’s vital to understanding how to protect them.

Mount Sutro’s once-thriving blue gum eucalyptus trees are dying. At the moment, though, there’s no approved environmental impact report for maintenance, and in the absence of major work conditions are deteriorating fast.

The ideas driving the environmental and social movements of the early 1970s gained a strong foothold in the East Bay Regional Park District, thanks in large part to a cohort of young park workers hired during that decade.

Looking out across the 650-acre project toward the distant Godzilla arm of the backhoe against the blue sky, I finally see on the ground what the planners and engineers have been describing to me ever since I first began writing stories about Hamilton ten years ago: a tapestry of habitats.

On the last weekend of March, 9,000 people armed with binoculars, butterfly nets, cameras, and smartphones, spread out over an archipelago of national park lands from Point Reyes in Marin County to Mori Point on the San Mateo coast. Their goal: document as many species as possible of plants, animals, and other living things in […]

As far as I know, the passage of the Wilderness Act 50 years ago was the first time in human history that a society has declared by statute that certain areas shall never be developed, nor exploited for commercial gain, nor intruded on by motorized transport.

Filmmaker Steve Dunsky usually spends his time behind the camera not in front of it. Now and then, however, he steps into public view. As one of the main creative forces behind the 50th anniversary celebration of the Wilderness Act that will take place in Vallejo this September, he’s become more public and perhaps more […]

Since 2012, the El Cerrito nonprofit ECTT has built two new trails: Motorcycle Hill Trail and another called Lower Snowdon Trail. Both of these are in the Hillside Natural Area, 85 acres of city-owned open space in El Cerrito.

“I am fortunate to live near Las Gallinas Creek, so I get to see it every day. Its beauty has been a great source of inspiration to me for many years, and that’s why I wrote my song Glory Day.” — Kurt Huget, one of the musicians on Watershed. Watershed, a recently released CD compilation, is […]

Santa Clara Valley Water District officials say they are facing an “unprecedented shortage” of water this year, and as the district’s drinking water reservoirs run dry, it is cutting releases into the county’s creeks and recharge ponds to conserve. In dry years SCVWD imports up to 99 percent of its drinking water from state and […]

The West Coast’s native Olympia oyster serves an important role as an ecosystem builder with its ability to filter the water. But owing to reasons that are still somewhat unclear, over the last few millennia native oysters have largely disappeared from the San Francisco Bay.

After a fire, botanists hustle out to burned areas to identify surviving and regenerating species. They’ve often got only a few leaves to go on, some from species that haven’t been seen for decades. So it’s tough. Want to test your skills against those of the botanists?

In a Facebook post today, Save Mount Diablo writes that this is the best wildflower season many of them have ever seen. Recent sightings include fire poppies and whispering bells, and the rare Kellogg’s climbing snapdragon, Antirrhinum kelloggii, which had only been recorded twice in Contra Costa County or the East Bay before, both times on […]

An expert in rare plants, Heath Bartosh is especially interested in “fire followers,” plants whose seeds stay buried in the ground until heat or smoke stimulates germination. These annuals flourish for one to three years. And then they’re gone—until the next fire.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then and have known ever since that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain.” — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac On Earth Day 2014, […]

Although many people are studying salt marsh harvest mice, or “salties,” as they are affectionately known, San Francisco State graduate student Anastasia Ennis is one of a few people studying harvest mouse population genetics.

My plan was really more of a prompt, a nudge from me to myself in the direction of urban-arboreal adventure. I’d wander San Francisco, neighborhood to neighborhood, park to park, paying attention to trees.

The son of Russian immigrants living in post-war Shanghai, Igor Skaredoff moved to California with his parents at the age of six, and has been here for most of his life. After a long career as an environmental engineer for Shell Oil, Skaredoff retired from industry and dedicated himself to advocating for the creeks and […]

Publisher David Loeb had his Bay Nature epiphany while hiking in China Camp State Park. That’s when he conceived of the idea to start a magazine about the natural wonders of the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently David gave a presentation at the Oakmont Symposium in Santa Rosa on the roots of Bay Nature magazine, […]

We first encountered Cheyanna Washburn in her role as an intern with the California Phenology Project at the John Muir National Historic Site in her hometown of Martinez. Now a student at Diablo Valley College in botany and recreational therapy, Cheyanna found her path into the natural world at the alternative New Leaf Leadership Academy, […]

The architect of urban butterfly habitat projects like Tigers on Market Street and the Green Hairstreak Corridor, and the restoration of Mission blues on Twin Peaks, Liam O’Brien is a man on a mission to prove that habitats for humans and habitats for butterflies aren’t mutually exclusive.

The Galapagos damselfish exists only in the specimens collection at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Bay Nature editorial director Eric Simons considers the fish and its lessons in a changing world.

There are lots of pretty pictures of the 3,000 nudibranchs species already discovered, but few specifics. Key elements of their fundamental biology are still poorly understood, or not understood at all. Or not even examined.

In 1863, not a year after Thoreau’s death, Frederick Law Olmsted, king of American landscape architecture, looked into the hills east of San Francisco Bay and saw that they were good. He imagined a park up there.

This year, the Trails for Richmond Action Committee (TRAC) is celebrating its 15th year as the leading advocacy group for completion of the San Francisco Bay Trail along the Richmond shoreline. TRAC’s chair and co-founder is Bruce Beyaert, a longtime Richmond resident and former Chevron employee whose passion for the Bay, his knack for planning, […]

Seven years after the Cosco Busan oil spill, a group of scientists led by Barbara Block at the Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey have discovered the exact chemical pathway that makes oil such an insidious toxin.

A few years ago the State Coastal Conservancy went looking for something new: habitat restoration that would also address sea level rise. Two years into a pilot experiment, the results suggest that in the appropriate places this green climate adaptation might work.

Today, after 13 years of work by the Invasive Spartina Project and its partners to eliminate the invasive hybrid, the team is now into the rebuilding phase of its long-term plan, replanting the area with native cordgrass in hopes that it will reclaim its former territory.

On a beautiful spring afternoon under blue skies and sunshine, our group followed the California Academy of Sciences renowned entomologist Dr. Brian Fisher down the Presidio bluffs to look for ants. Fisher had surveyed this area years ago, he said, but not been back since its recent restoration. What did we find? To our surprise, […]

Bay Nature’s 2014 Local Hero Awards dinner, held on Sunday, March 23 at Scott’s Seafood on Jack London Square, honored three local conservation heroes who’ve made outstanding contributions to the understanding, protection, and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more about our honorees here. Our guest speaker was Michael Brune, […]

Hi there, and welcome to Bay Nature’s diary-of-a-bioblitzer page. Did you participate in the big event? See anything weird? Learned something new about a place you often visit? Saw some part of the Golden Gate National Parks for the first time? Let us know by filling out this form and attaching a picture, then go […]

Emmy-award-winning filmmaker and marine scientist David McGuire has not only swum with sharks, he’s swum FOR them. As founder and executive director of the Sausalito-based marine research and advocacy organization Sea Stewards, McGuire started the locally popular fundraisers “Swim for the Sharks” and “Run for the Sharks”. His newer project, Shark Stewards, focuses on the […]

By the time you read this in April, the die will have been cast and the show — of unknown quality and duration — should be on. So head on out for a springtime pilgrimage, and while you’re at it, why not share your best wildflower sightings with us and our readers?

In these days of scarce water, the supply of organizations talking about water policy seems to exceed the supply of the precious liquid itself. But alongside the economically powerful giants duking it out for their share of the dwindling supplies, there’s The Environmental Justice Coalition for Water (EJCW), which focuses on the inequitable allocation of water […]

About 60 coastal bottlenose dolphins have been spotted traveling from Southern California to the waters off Bodega Bay, pushing the northern limit of their range and leaving the scientists who study them with a mystery.

We’re delighted to be able to offer some wonderful wilderness getaways — plus mouthwatering wine, art, music, and gardening packages — for Bay Nature’s Annual Awards Dinner silent auction this year. Proceeds from the auction will support Bay Nature Institute and its programs. Feast your eyes on the items below and prepare to make your […]

Of the 35 breeding butterfly species in San Francisco, 25 have now found a non-native host plant they can work with. In an area this urban, undesirable weeds growing in sidewalk cracks have become vital to the life of butterflies.

On Sunday March 23rd, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune will speak at Bay Nature’s Annual Awards Dinner on the significance of wilderness in the 21st century. His talk is entitled “Wilderness at 50: Keeping It Real, Relevant, and Wild in 2014″. Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune’s first trip out West – a family vacation […]

Over five years ago, Nalani and Anna Heath-Delaney, ditched their water guzzling lawn and planted a colorful and diverse native plant garden. They have since saved water, provided habitat for local species and created a native plant sanctuary. With the current drought, now is the perfect time to consider transitioning your garden and “going native.”

National Park Service ecologist Sarah Allen has been looking at the “big picture” of marine ecosystem health since the mid-1970s when she worked as a field biologist on the Farallon Islands, then later in the ’80s and ’90s tracking seabirds, whales, and seals in the Gulf of the Farallones for Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now […]

A few years ago a Bay Nature reader spotted something golden and shiny on her carpet. Suspecting it was a piece of jewelry she picked it up, only to find it was alive! What kind of beetle is golden, metallic and looks like a ladybug?

The great egret colony at Martin Griffin Preserve in West Marin failed to fledge any young egrets in 2013, the first time in the preserve’s 62-year history, leading Audubon Canyon Ranch to change public access to the preserve for 2014.

A Yosemite getaway and a Central Valley birding tour with Bay Nature naturalist Michael Ellis are highlights of our silent auction this year. Feast your eyes on the mouthwatering items we have lined up for the Bay Nature Annual Awards Dinner on March 23rd! Check out the preview here, then buy your tickets to the dinner!

Josie Iselin’s passion for discovering natural treasures along the shore started young, and later evolved into her life’s work: turning ocean objects into art through her popular photography books. We spoke with Josie as she prepared to release her seventh book An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed in March 2014. When and where did […]

After years of demolition and cleanup, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District installed nesting boxes for rare purple martins at the top of Mount Umunhum. Preparing the summit for the martins marks a special moment in the restoration process — of the completion of the demolition phase and a celebration of the summit’s rebirth as a habitat and natural wonder.

The forecast calls for big rain this weekend from an “atmospheric river,” a plume of moisture stretching thousands of miles across the Pacific and splashing onto land right smack on the Northern California coast.

Several boaters spotted and photographed a sea otter feeding in Tomales Bay this week, the first confirmed sighting of a sea otter in the bay since 2005. Nature photographer Richard Blair took the above photo from the boat of longtime Inverness conservationist Richard Plant on Monday, Feb. 3. Brett Miller, who was leading a Saturday […]

In the 150-plus years that we’ve been tracking rainfall in Northern California, it’s never been this dry. It was the driest December in many places, and this week’s drizzle wasn’t enough to keep San Francisco from its driest-ever January. And if there’s an end in sight to the big-picture weather pattern that’s led to the […]

In the mid 90s, botanist Mike Wood was contracted by the U.S. Navy to undertake a rare plant survey of Yerba Buena Island as the military prepared to leave the base. At the time he didn’t think the island would be of much botanical interest. But two decades later, he’s still going back.

Several thousand of the 60,000 plants intended to ultimately go into the ground at the Hamilton Wetland restoration site will arrive there via the hands of young Marin residents as part of the Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed Program.

English-born geomorphologist Jeremy Lowe is serious about wetlands and serious about mud, though he’s got a wicked sense of humor that shows he’s not taking himself too seriously. We caught up with the senior scientist from San Francisco-based environmental planning firm ESA to discuss why mud is a critical element of the Bay’s ecosystem — […]

The survey research that Peter Moyle started decades ago now has a dual purpose: It offers evidence for the free fall of native fish populations, but it also may ultimately contribute to one of the best opportunities to soften this decline.

Our growing understanding of orca ecotypes — bolstered by recent advances in research technology and protocols — has been a major key to unlocking the mystery of the killer whales of the eastern North Pacific.

The Morgan Fire transformed more than 3,100 acres of meadow, chaparral, and woodland on Mount Diablo’s south and east sides, including Perkins Canyon. “It was a once-in- a-generation event,” says Seth Adams — the biggest fire on the mountain since 1977.

Food seems an unusual use for a plant called soaproot. In fact, food is just one of many traditional California Indian uses for the plant, some apparently contradictory. Soap, food, glue, medicine, poison, and more — all from a hairy, fist-size underground bulb.

One of the keys to their success is that Argentine ants are much less aggressive toward other Argentine ants than they are toward other species. They share information, resources, and trails; they are so cooperative with each other they appear to function as a single colony, with many queens and many nests.

I have a mixed reaction when I hear that a place I know and love has been hit by wildfire. On the one hand, there’s a visceral recoil: Will this cherished place survive? But on the other hand, there’s a thrill that comes from anticipating dramatic changes to a familiar landscape.

The young trees are dwarfed by the backdrop of towering eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and Monterey cypress planted in the Presidio more than 120 years ago, but the mission is lofty: to replace a dying forest.

On a whale watching trip in the Monterey Bay, photographer Tory Kallman witnessed one of nature’s great events—an orca in pursuit of lunch. One of the resulting photographs became Bay Nature’s January 2014 cover image.

Over two years, David Kroodsma rode his bike 21,000 miles from Palo Alto to Tierra del Fuego and then from New York back home, to study and talk about climate change. A Q&A with the San Francisco-based climate journalist, scientist and educator, who’s recently authored a book about his experiences.

Why the California Academy of Sciences brought in a bookseller from Homer, Alaska to help lead the articulation of its rare orca skeleton — and how Lee Post became “Lee Post AKA The Boneman,” one of the world’s leading authorities on the re-putting-together of beached whales.

The North Bay played host to one of nature’s great spectacles this week, the annual Richardson Bay spawning of Pacific herring, an event eagerly anticipated by hungry animals and curious people — and an event all the more precious for how close it once came to disappearing.

Richard James, who keeps the beaches of Point Reyes as litter-free as he can, has an obsessive eye for the discordant note of trash. His life as a park volunteer comes with a lesson: You learn strange things when you pick up after the world.

Cheyanna Washburn, a sophomore at Diablo Valley College in botany and recreational therapy, is one of those dedicated young leaders who inspires her peers to get involved and active. Before entering college, she was a student at New Leaf Leadership Academy at Vicente Martinez High School in Martinez, where she participated in dozens of creek […]

>> Liam was recently interviewed on KQED-FM’s Forum about his life in lepidoptery (2/7/14). LISTEN A trained stage actor (who appeared in Les Miserables on Broadway), Liam O’Brien now uses his “stage presence” and self-described “loud voice” to champion the cause of local lepidoptera. His encyclopedic knowledge of butterflies and moths is entirely self-taught, his seemingly […]

Craig Anderson is the inspirational Executive Director of LandPaths, a Santa Rosa-based nonprofit dedicated to connecting people to the natural and agricultural landscapes of Sonoma County. At LandPaths, Craig has pioneered new ways to nurture citizen engagement with open space, promoting the concept of “people-powered parks” that encourages citizen participation in providing stewardship and public […]

Wildlife biologist and environmental science writer (and former Bay Nature contributing editor) Matthew Bettelheim temporarily switched out of his academic mode to write a children’s book that is coming out this week. Sardis and Stamm takes young readers on a journey through the unique and fragile habitat of the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge through […]

This past fall a cyanobacteria known as, Microcystis aeruginosa, spiked toxin levels above the state’s safe recreational exposure limit at Watsonville’s Pinto Lake. Scientists and the community have begun tackling the problem and hope that conclusions drawn at Pinto Lake will help remedy cyanbacterial blooms elsewhere.

Last Friday about 120 birders fanned out across the 15-mile diameter of the San Francisco Christmas Bird Count circle and set what could be a new record for the number of species in the SF count — 183.

For Bay Nature, 2013 brought environmental news, features and photography celebrating and capturing not only nature’s beauty but its resiliency and vulnerability. Take a look at the year gone by in stunning nature photographs.

One of the most dramatic mating rituals in the animal kingdom is right on our Bay Area doorstep. Male elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park risk life and limb to be the guy who gets to impregnate up to 75 females.

Served in French dishes under the alias pom pom du blanc, lion’s mane has a texture and taste resembling lobster or shrimp. Chris Schoenstein, a lifelong enthusiast and member of the Mycological Society of San Francisco, has only seen one 2 or 3 times. But that, if you’re a mushroom hunter, is the hook that keeps you coming back to an event like the Wunderlich Foray.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has declared 230 acres of San Francisco critical habitat for the Franciscan manzanita, the oft-discussed rare shrub famous for its dramatic rediscovery and the relocation of a sole survivor in 2009.

This fall’s government shutdown left a two-week gap in Point Blue Conservation Science’s bird monitoring and banding data. But with the counts now in, the second half of October appears to have been a success, with researchers capturing and banding a surprisingly high number of fox sparrows.

San Francisco filmmaker Judy Irving may be best known for her award-winning documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, about a homeless street musician who befriends a flock of conures living in the trees in his neighborhood — but her heart belongs to pelicans. Irving’s lifelong love of the gawky but charismatic birds inspired her […]

A proposal now under NOAA consideration would more than double the size of the sanctuaries, and protect the entire Sonoma County coastline and part of the Mendocino coastline to Point Arena, as well west to the edge of the continental shelf.

Since 2010 the California King Tides Initiative has been documenting king tide events through photography—presenting a very real picture of rising sea levels. This year, the project has expanded to include a citizen science program, that will help researchers ground climate models.

Longtime hiker and mobility coach Jayah Faye Paley turned her passion for the outdoors into a mission to get people back on their feet – and back on the trail – using the power of hiking poles. BN: Are you from the Bay Area? No, I’m originally from Florida, where it’s hot, muggy, buggy, and flat. I […]

Bay Area oaks are prolific, but acorn use has diminished within the last 200 years. With the help of modern kitchenware you can rediscover the art of acorn preparation and its rich history grounded in Native American traditions.

Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge has been shaped by industry and development leaving its three endemic and endangered species clinging to their habitat. But in a recent partnership between the Port of Stockton and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, dredged sand from the San Joaquin River will be offloaded at the refuge to aid with large-scale dune restoration.

Three years ago, managers at the Invasive Spartina Project thought they’d be almost out of a job by now. But while the ruthless and hybridizing cordgrass hasn’t spread any more, it hasn’t been eradicated either and this final push to eliminate it, will be the hardest.

A life-changing accident gave former Cal academic Ronn Patterson time to think long and hard about his life path. He ended up founding Dolphin Charters, which leads guided natural history cruises and photo expeditions to wildlife hotspots in North and South America. Captain Ronn moves with the wildlife: In the spring and fall, he […]

This weekend, hundreds of bird enthusiasts flocked to a quiet southside Berkeley neighborhood to catch a glimpse of a beautiful North American breeding bird that has never before been sighted in Alameda County.

Anyone interested in Bay Area nature and ecology has likely come across Jake Sigg’s Nature News, an indispensable and idiosyncratic email newsletter that goes out to 2,400 subscribers every week. Nature News—a volunteer project Jake does on his own—is much more than a listing of local hikes, classes, campaigns, and restoration events. At any given […]

We asked Jake Sigg, the popular and opinionated editor of Nature News, what originally inspired him to become such a passionate advocate for the environment. Here’s what he told us…. Back in the spring of 1966, I went on a Sierra Club backpacking trip down the Escalante River, a tributary of the Colorado. Of all […]

Oakland’s Knowland Park boasts unparalleled views of the San Leandro Bay, gnarled coast live oak trees and stands of rare, maritime chaparral. But within this large landscape, one of nature’s smallest communities is flourishing—lichen.

Some of the area’s most amazing spiders are the ones you’re most likely to miss. With colorful appendages and a big pair of striking frontal eyes, the diminutive Habronattus genus of jumping spider might be one of the cutest, and most surprising, of Western arachnids.

Mussel Rock Park has an uneven human and geologic history. That hasn’t stopped Oscar Porter from hiking there every day in search of extraordinary nature. He’s collected his photos of coyotes, birds and spiders on YouTube and in a book called Nature Under the Fog.

I’ve noticed lots of butterflies (moths?) in the Indian Valley Open Space area of Novato (oak forest). I haven’t seen this many in previous years. The butterflies are about the size of a nickel or quarter and are white. What kind of butterfly are they?

After four decades of preserving open space in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) is undertaking a vision planning process, that will guide its work for the next 15-20 years. What do you want for the future of open space?

As California’s fire season comes to a close, the fires that burned Yosemite and Mt. Diablo have left a landscape of burned trees, logs and soil. What to do next with that land, particularly in Yosemite, is a complicated decision, and politicians, land use managers, and ecologists have differing goals.

Gwen Heistand hasn’t always loved spiders: In fact, she used to be deathly afraid of them! As resident biologist at Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Martin Griffin Preserve on Bolinas Lagoon, Gwen now helps people overcome their own fears of these creepy-crawlies and replace it with a sense of wonder. She’ll be giving a talk on the […]

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the lifeblood of the central valley. But this somewhat landscaped environment is also home to some of California’s rare plant populations, and on a kayak trip down Sycamore Slough, a group of volunteers is on the hunt to find them.

Some people swear there’s earthquake weather. Some people swear there’s not. So what happens when an earthquake strikes California during earthquake weather? We called the Berkeley Seismology Lab to get an expert opinion.

Coyotes are among the 3-5 percent of mammal species that mate for life, and parents raise pups cooperatively. Except for loners and transients, coyotes live in nuclear families not so different from our own.

But the pressure to exploit these resources isn’t going away anytime soon either, nor is the debate over the wisdom of doing so. As we weigh the pros and cons, a missing piece of the conversation is the land itself: What is the Monterey Formation? What is it made of and how did it get here? And what kind of habitats, plants, and animals live atop it?

Did you know the Pacific leatherback turtle is California’s official marine reptile? Nesting in Indonesia then migrating to Californian waters to feast on jellyfish, this elusive species is a truly global traveler. But with threats both in the Pacific and on their nesting beaches, the leatherback turtle may not be around for that much longer.

As the fog lifts and clear days fill the week, it is a sure sign that fall in the Bay Area is upon us. And what better way to celebrate than by attending one of the many harvest festivals in the Bay Area. Here’s Bay Nature’s festival round-up to get you started.

Tracy Fasanella, CEO of CarbonCount, Inc., a green accounting firm, lives in two worlds. When she’s not parsing cap-and-trade regulations for clients, pointing them to money for efficiency research, she tends her garden, nurtures her rabbits, and gets both fertilizer and joy from her chickens. BN: What is your connection with the Bay Area? Fasanella: […]

Q: I collect rainwater to use on my garden and I’ve found Pacific chorus frogs in the black garbage can that collects the rainwater, but I’ve never seen eggs or tadpoles in there. I wonder why not; would they be too small to see? [Marian, San Jose]

Photographer Steve Zamek, waited at Lloyd Lake in Golden Gate Park for over three hours photographing birds. When he decided it was time to leave, this hooded merganser sprang into action and Zamek snapped this shot.

National parks are not only recreational hubs, but they also serve as centers for scientific research and environmental monitoring programs. Since the federal government shutdown, researchers have been unable to continue their work running the risk that months of consistent study could be lost in a few weeks.

When I walked into Bay Nature’s office in February 2004, I had never run a magazine before. I was 29 years old. For the first year or two, it was often disconcerting when I’d meet authors, sources, or photographers in person after working with them for months on an issue of the magazine. They’d say, […]

Seawater has historically been alkaline, but is increasingly becoming less so. What does this mean for the ocean ecosystem in general? And along the California coast in particular? We’re just beginning to figure that out.

The link between dry land and deep water may soon be better recognized thanks to twin efforts to link together 3,300 acres of spectacular public shoreline and to make that land part of the California Coastal National Monument, a sprawling protected area almost no one’s ever heard of.

Humpback whales often enter the Monterey Bay to feed in the summer months. But this year, huge anchovy runs have brought them in by the hundreds. Photographer Tory Kallman shares his photographs of the feeding frenzy.

The researchers log the sighting: three blue whales. From this distance, the world’s largest mammal looks like nothing more than a silver glint on the ocean’s surface. But the spotting is significant to the researchers, who aim to protect the animals from passing ships.

The 2011 state budget crisis hit California’s state parks hard. Two years later, the Parks Forward Initiative has been looking to ensure the park system’s future and on Oct. 2nd, asked for public input in San Rafael.

Our native fish may be down, but they’re not out, they’re hanging on in ecosystems they once ruled. And biologists and environmental advocates alike are working to make things better. The fish have advocates, and the exhibit is a tool for that advocacy, a means of engaging the public at large.

For the past 20 years, Mill Valley native Sue Gardner has run the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy’s Park Stewardship program, connecting people to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), the nation’s largest urban national park.

It can be said that the nature of nature is change. That doesn’t mean change is necessarily good or bad. It just is. And the best advice is often to embrace the change instead of digging in your heels in a hopeless attempt to prevent it.

“Phenology studies the seasonal cycles in nature, such as when flowers bloom, insects hatch, and birds migrate. In the era of climate change, the science of seasonal observation has taken on a new urgency.” – Jacoba Charles, “The Phenology Project”, Bay Nature Rona is co-founder of the New Leaf Leadership Academy, an innovative program within […]

Todd Evans aims for cultural and historical authenticity in his plays. His latest work, Troublesome Creek, celebrates the life of environmental writer and activist Rachel Carson, who lands in a small Kentucky mining town in the 1960s to defend her new book Silent Spring. The play is being performed this week by Sonoma Stage Works, […]

Corky Quirk is the founder and executive director of Northern California Bats (aka NorCal Bats), a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and release of bats. NorCal Bats is also deeply committed to dispelling the fears and myths about bats that lead to the destruction of roosts and colonies. Corky’s annual walks to the Yolo […]

San Francisco resident Kelly Jensen is the Interlibrary Loan and Digital Production Assistant at the California Academy of Sciences. One of the perks of her job is a discounted membership in City CarShare (CCS), a program which offers car rentals by the hour or the day. Members choose from a selection of low-emission, hybrid, or […]

Roberta Lyons is a muckraker, though a different sort than her journalist mother. Lyons herself looks past actual muck – the rash-inducing algal blooms that periodically foul the shores of her beloved Clear Lake – to find plentiful natural beauty and wildness. And through her role as president of the Lake County Land Trust, she does her best to […]

Lance Milbrand has spent more than 27 years as an independent filmmaker specializing in films about wild animals and marine life. He’s donned his scuba gear to film the endangered Devils Hole pupfish in a Death Valley cave and a school of Galapagos sharks off the coast of Mexico. On land, he’s chronicled park rangers’ […]

Q: Is there a way to tell the difference between male vs female lizards? How do they attract their mates? [Saundra, Concord] A: One way, Saundra, is to wait until spring and watch them mate: The male is on top. But I bet you want more details than that. The Bay Area’s most common lizard […]

Armed with a San Francisco Bay Trail map, his set of Bay Trail map cards, and his Clipper Card, San Francisco resident Kurt Schwabe spent every day last month circumnavigating the Bay, completing over 300 miles of accessible trail – and mainly using public transit to get there and back. At home between segments, he […]

This summer’s confluence of the Americas Cup races and the presumptive opening of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge (if they can figure out what to do about those pesky bolts) has some people calling 2013 the Year of the Bay. At Bay Nature we say that every day is Earth Day, so […]

Mrs. Semino once had to put on a pair of rubber boots to cook her Thanksgiving turkey. It was a long time ago, in the 1920s, when she and her husband lived by the banks of Sonoma Creek in a place called Wingo. After a storm or high tide, Wingo’s half dozen cabin floors returned […]

Olompali State Historic Park, located just west of Highway 101 between Novato and Petaluma, is rich in both natural and human history. But despite its location right next to a major highway, it is less well-known and less visited than some of its other North Bay cousins in the state park system. Here visitors can […]

What better way to celebrate the end of the week and the ascent of summer than an evening hike ending with a breathtaking sunset? Friday marks the longest day of the year, with the sun rising at 5:48 AM and setting at 8:35 PM. The summer solstice sunset is the sun’s final hurrah before it […]

Ever heard of California’s “Low Carbon Fuel Standard”? UC Berkeley prof Dan Kammen co-wrote it. What about the terms “cap and trade” and “carbon offsets”? Kammen helped popularize these concepts for the American public and transform the way we view energy consumption. As director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at the University of […]

Every so often I see a note from a local birder or amateur botanist that reminds me that there’s a whole world of animal and plant movement under our noses all the time, comings and goings of which we just catch glimpses every so often. That’s what happened on Cinqo de Mayo, when San Francisco […]

Here are selected photos from the Bay Nature Publisher’s Circle hike at Rockville Trails with Solano Land Trust on the sunny day of May 11, 2013. Our hike of approximately five miles through quintessential inner coast range oak woodlands and grasslands afforded us expansive views of the surrounding hills and valleys. [Photos by David Loeb, […]

Stewart Gilbert of San Rafael writes to ask: “Who makes these homes built out of sticks? They’re very common at China Camp. From a wood rat of some sort? The sticks can be large, requiring strength to pile up. I’ve never seen any sign of habitation or fresh construction. And they occur at both the […]

It’s not easy to catch up with Cindy Moreno. The daughter of immigrant farmworkers from the Central Valley and a recent graduate in environmental studies from San Jose State, Cindy is doing more than her share for the environment.

Rick Lewis evokes the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Where other people see industry and ugliness, he finds the bright and the beautiful. Where other people see steel yards, he spots great blue herons. A self-taught photographer whose work has appeared in at least half of the 50 issues of Bay […]

Inspired by her grandparents’ love of the outdoors, South Bay biotech executive Anne Ferguson founded an organization that helps older adults feel good about getting outside and engaging with nature. We spoke about Bay Area Older Adults and what it’s all about…. BN: When did you first arrive in the Bay Area and what first […]

Internationally acclaimed painter Jeff Long, known primarily for his abstract works, has lately taken up his brush in defense of Western birds and other wildlife. Referencing the classic bird illustrations of John James Audubon, Long’s monumental and highly detailed paintings depart from the master by including elements of the ecological challenges each species faces. His […]

What has more than two thousand legs and is converging on San Francisco’s Corona Heights neighborhood? A: The parents, children, insects and arachnids who collectively take part in Bug Day at the city’s Randall Museum. Q: Who is responsible? A: Nancy Ellis, Science Curator. And she’s thrilled. I spoke recently with Nancy about Bug Day, […]

We’ve thought about doing a piece on Clear Lake for a long time: It’s a wildlife magnet just over two hours from our office in Berkeley, and yet relatively few Bay Area nature lovers ever visit. You might imagine that Clear Lake was named for the clarity of its water. Not so. It turns out […]

Last winter I noticed a different bird in the bare branches of the London plane trees outside the office. A yellow-rumped warbler. Not an uncommon bird, yet not one I would expect to see next to a cement plant.

Barnacles are hermaphroditic – they contain both male and female sex organs. You’re thinking, “Well, they always have a date on Saturday night.” No, it’s a really bad idea to self-fertilize: Inbreeding results in little genetic diversity. Worms, slugs, snails – slow-moving animals with low rates of encounter – are all hermaphroditic. And you could not get any slower than an adult barnacle!

In December 2012, the Bay Area, and the world, lost one of its most eloquent spokespeople for and about birds. Rich Stallcup, a cofounder of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now PRBO Conservation Science), was an unrivaled birder and teacher. Here are two of the dozens of remembrances posted on PRBO’s online guestbook: More than anyone […]

Tim Hastings wrote to us wondering about “many large round, almost ‘dinosaur-egg’ like rocks dotting the muddy sands” when he was hiking the Estero Trail. Tim’s guess is that the soft rock is susceptible to erosive shaping during the rise and fall of tides; thus the almost uniform rounded, oval shape of these small boulders. That’s […]

For Palo Alto-based Environmental Volunteers, personal exploration of nature is what it’s all about. By providing school kids with hands-on experiences of nature, Environmental Volunteers works to instill a love of the natural world and an interest in protecting it from an early age. The organization’s executive director Allen Berkowitz spoke with me last week […]

A resident of Saratoga, Madeline Morrow sits on the Steering Committee of the 2013 “Going Native” tour, a two-day extravaganza of 60 open gardens around Santa Clara, including hers. The event, hosted by the Santa Clara chapter of the California Native Plant Society, is a showcase for “the unique aesthetic appeal of gardens designed with […]

Nowadays Reed Holderman dedicates his time to the conservation of trees and their habitats, specifically the Coast Redwood. That’s because he’s been the executive director of the Sempervirens Fund since 2009. One of the oldest conservation organizations in the United States, Sempervirens has been preserving the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains since 1901. […]

One constant of Cindy Spring’s ever-changing life path has been her commitment to live her values. A one-time news broadcaster and holistic health practitioner with a deep dedication to activism, Cindy’s passion turned to local nature ten years ago following a stint as an organizer for Earth Day 2000. Next month, the program she co-founded […]

The East Bay Hills are riddled with hidden paths and staircases. Providing an athletic training ground for the hard-core runner, a short cut from elevation to elevation for the casual rambler, convenient access to transit systems that have long ceased to exist, they are also like Easter eggs: Appearing – as if out of nowhere […]

On the very edge of the North American tectonic plate, surrounded by ranches and wetlands and everyone’s favorite park — Point Reyes National Seashore — sits the town of Point Reyes Station. And in the center of town (it’s all the center, really—it’s small) sits Point Reyes Books. And at the helm of the store sit […]

Silently rising above the industry and commerce lining Highway 101 south of San Francisco is San Bruno Mountain, an area rich in biodiversity. What has allowed this gem to remain relatively undisturbed despite the development pressures lapping at its feet? The work and perseverance of many local residents, galvanized by the vision and passion of […]

The herring are running again in San Francisco, and it’s quite a show. Commercial fishing boats cast their nets in China Basin, at the mouth of Mission Creek, in the shadow of the Giants ballpark, and dozens of anglers threw small nets from piers and wharves all along the waterfront in Mission Bay. Birding expert […]

A number of local bird rescue groups are reporting an outbreak of salmonella among pine siskins, small songbirds that are common at Bay Area bird feeders this time of year. Wildcare of Marin sent dead birds to a lab for testing and confirmed that they died of salmonella. “The disease Salmonellosis is a common cause of disease and […]

On a warm autmn morning, a half-dozen volunteers are watering young native plants on a piece of land known as Marsh Creek IV, just outside Clayton. The land, on the banks of its namesake creek, is one of several properties owned by Save Mount Diablo (SMD), a Walnut Creek–based group that’s been advocating for Mount […]

Discover diverse wildlife and great sunsets, even in winter, with naturalist Jules Evens at McClure’s Beach, Point Reyes. This is his second-to-last post in a yearlong quest to hike and write about every trail at Point Reyes.

Want to help out the bumblebee population? Get rid of asphalt and plant a diversity of flower species. That’s the conclusion of a new study of a California native bumblebee published recently in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists from the UC Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin looked […]

I’m in another world from the moment I step into the East Bay Regional Park District’s Big Break Regional Shoreline. Here on the edge of the Delta in eastern Contra Costa County, birds sing and soar overhead, cottonwood leaves rustle in the breeze, and on a clear day you can see across the Delta’s vast […]

When we decided to commission an original illustration for our January feature about Big Break Regional Shoreline, I did what I often do in these situations: I contacted Ann Caudle, who runs the scientific illustration program at Cal State Monterey. She suggested Logan Parsons, a freelance illustrator based in Pacific Grove. She created the illustration […]

Major General Anthony Jackson came out of retirement for one more mission: to turn around California’s state parks department. In a Bay Nature interview, Jackson explains why, “My goal, honest and truly, is not closing any parks.”

When we put out the call for photos to go along with our forthcoming salamander feature by David Rains Wallace, I wasn’t sure what to expect. How many local salamander and newt photos could possibly be out there? Quite a few, as it happens: I received nearly 300 submissions for the story. Some of the […]

I’m tremendously saddened to hear of the recent – and, to me, sudden – passing of master birder Rich Stallcup. Rich was one of the founders of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now PRBO Conservation Science). And he was one of the most insightful naturalists I’ve ever had the opportunity to go birding with (though, unfortunately, not often enough). […]

Docents help bring many Bay Area parks alive to the public. No where is that more true than the King-Swett Ranches outside of Vallejo, where Jim Walsh leads tours into areas otherwise inaccessible to the public.

Wild Emergency Services, an animal aid group, has started a petition to change way California Fish & Game deals with mountain lions in public places after Half Moon Bay cougar cub shooting, and more Bay Area nature news.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Berkeley, CA (December 17, 2012) — A beloved ranger/naturalist at Muir Woods, a dynamic advocate for open space around Mount Diablo, and a young woman dedicated to reaching out to diverse communities with a message of conservation will be the recipients of Bay Nature Institute’s 2013 Local Hero Awards. Each year, the […]

Each year, the nonprofit Bay Nature Institute, based in Berkeley, selects three individuals who are making outstanding contributions to the understanding, protection, and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. No one is more dedicated to getting people out to appreciate and learn about the natural world than Mia Monroe, Site […]

Each year, the nonprofit Bay Nature Institute, based in Berkeley, selects three individuals who are making outstanding contributions to the understanding, protection, and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. No one knows more about Mount Diablo and its people than Seth Adams, Director of Land Programs at Save Mount Diablo. […]

Each year, the nonprofit Bay Nature Institute, based in Berkeley, selects three individuals who are making outstanding contributions to the understanding, protection, and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. At 23 years, Cindy Moreno has already packed in more experience in the environmental arena than most of us get to […]

In summer 2012, we reported on the East Bay Regional Park District’s plan for a prescribed burn at Redwood Regional Park. The author of that feature, Wendy Tokuda, went out just before Thanksgiving to watch the burn. Here’s her report: The prescribed burn at Redwood Regional Park in Oakland happened on November 12, although not […]

Coming up in our January 2013 issue, noted author (and one of our favorites!) David Rains Wallace surveys our region’s remarkable diversity of salamanders and newts. Tiny slender salamanders in your garden, toxic newts in a nearby park, Pacific giant salamanders deep in a redwood forest: it turns out that we live in the land […]

In a previous era, Michael Closson might have been a pioneer outdoorsman in the Sierra Nevada. Now he’s simply an avid hiker – and a passionate advocate for the environment. When he’s not hiking, Michael channels his passion into his work as Executive Director of Acterra, a South Bay nonprofit that provides people with tangible, hands-on […]

The San Pedro Headlands offers up the ultimate solution in “sustainable” Christmas trees — restoring coastal scrubland by removing Monterey pine. My tree was a little short of perfect, but one to remember. (Alison Hawkes)

Scientists report new findings on how a 750-legged millipede from the Bay Area – the leggiest animal on Earth — may have evolved all those legs to thrive in its unique niche under sandstone rocks in moist oak woodlands.

The first thing we heard was the exhalation of the animal,” says marine ecologist Kirsten Lindquist about the blue whale that surfaced close to R/V Fulmar during a research trip in late July. The trip was run by ACCESS, Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies, a collaborative research project of PRBO Conservation Science and two of […]

Since the 1970s, Claire Schoen has been producing environmental documentaries in a variety of formats, from photography to film to radio. She’s recently expanded her repertoire to take advantage of online opportunities as a “web storyteller.” Her current project, RISE: Climate Change and Coastal Communities, strives to educate the public about the impact of climate change on […]

With the Northeast still reeling from the affects of superstorm Sandy, there’s been quite a bit of chatter out here on the Pacific about our own vulnerabilities to large tropical storms in the age of climate change.

San Franciscans voted in a landslide against an effort to study the removal of Hetch Hetchy. A few dozen miles south, at Stanford, another campaign aims to remove the much smaller Searsville Dam, which blocks steelhead spawning while also creating wetland habitat.

On November 1, the historic ship the Alma set sail from the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park on the north end of the city, bound for its birthplace, Hunter’s Point, which it hadn’t visited for several decades. The Alma is a scow schooner, a flat-bottomed boat that maritime park Superintendent Craig Kenkel called “the […]

On the eve of the 100-year anniversary, the decision to drain Hetch Hetchy Valley to build a reservoir for San Francisco is still actively debated, even as the city’s dependence on the Sierra water has deepened.

It’s Halloween, and you’ve probably noticed spiders everywhere. And not just the ones in costume. Perhaps the most seasonal of Bay Area spiders is the “pumpkin spider,” which gets it name from its bulbous, rust-colored thorax.

The California parks department is figuring out how to disperse $10 million to groups that kept their local state parks from closing this year. But some parks fans wonder how they’ll get out from the shadow of a parks department in scandal.

Time for Wednesday’s news digest! Lake County residents to vote on 1/2-cent sales tax increase to make Clear Lake clearer and cleaner. [Santa Rosa Press Democrat] Opposition rising to Warriors arena on San Francisco waterfront. [Curbed SF] Following San Francisco’s lead, San Mateo County supervisors are voting on banning plastic bags and setting a fee […]

Marshall Beach Trail. October 12, 2012 “Life is a journey, not a destination.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson The trailhead to Marshall Beach begins after driving a couple of miles along the L Ranch Rd., out through the northern edge of the bishop pine forest, across some open pastureland. Just beyond the forest edge the sandy soil […]

It would seem a no-brainer in eco-minded San Francisco that a $195 million bond to spruce up city parks would get a thumbs up on election day. Which is why it’s surprising that environmental groups are against it.

Some people work full time on behalf of environmental education. Carol Johnson works double-time. As both the Assistant General Manager of Public Affairs for the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) and the Executive Director of the Regional Parks Foundation, her hours are filled both with the “forest” and the “trees”, the big picture and […]

Sean FitzHoward, winner of our 2012 Local Environmental Hero Award for Youth Engagement, recently wrote us about her experience aboard an oceanic research vessel over the summer. It was time well-spent! Dear David and Bay Nature Staff, I just wanted to share some pictures of my summer with you. For five weeks this summer, I was […]

Bird nesting, anybody will tell you, is a spring and summer event. And it makes sense that many birds nest when grass grows, branches bud, and bugs emerge. But to mangle a notorious quote, the noisiest nesting season I ever heard was December in the San Francisco Bay Area. And the noisiest creatures in my […]

Today, it turns out, is the sixth annual “EarthCache Day.” What the heck is that? It’s a natural-sciences-flavored version of geocaching—the increasingly popular practice of using portable GPS devices, or smart phones, to find special hidden boxes or other items hidden by other geocachers. A good day to start this occasional series of blog posts […]

On a 21-foot aluminum boat floating in Suisun Marsh, Amanda Schwabe heaves up the otter trawl as Cesar Morales coils the rope on deck. When Schwabe brings up the net, Captain Teejay O’Rear pours its contents into a shallow pan. In bibbed waders provided by UC Davis, O’Rear and three volunteers (myself included) reach into […]

John Wade is one of about 20 skippers who make up the Farallon Patrol for PRBO Conservation Science. Skippers offer their boats and volunteer their time to sail to the Farallon Islands, a shuttle and resupply the scientists who live and work on Southeast Farallon Island, a critical seabird and marine mammal breeding site. The […]

Most of the people in the world–and most of their infrastructure–can be found in jurisdictions bordering the coast or coastal watersheds. The Bay Area is no exception. However, in this era of climate change, the benefits of living close to the shoreline are accompanied by the peril of rising sea levels and more frequent major […]

You’ll likely smell them before you see them: A rich ammoniac scent engulfs our boat, and then they loom out of the fog – spires of naked rock, eerily lunar in configuration. And as they emerge, there’s an aural accompaniment: the cackles and squawks of hundreds of thousands of seabirds, with the bellows of thou-sands of pinnipeds […]

During her two years at the Environmental Protection Agency designing the first Energy Star programs, Cyane Dandridge lamented not being able to “see change happen” on the ground. So she found work closer to her heart, founding an environmental consulting firm dedicated to helping communities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, then co-founding the first school […]

For over 130 years, Lobitos Ridge has been climbed only by cattle. So when we push open a stiff gate and ascend a steep pasture, tall grasses snap at our ankles. We sidestep old fences and prickly thistle. In a gentle swale, we admire a muddy stock pond, rich with tadpoles. It’s a sneak peek […]

It may be safely said that there are two kinds of people: those who notice mushrooms and those who don’t. Likewise, there are two kinds of noticers: the appreciative and the appalled. Retired East Bay Regional Park District naturalist Ron Russo sums up years of visitor reaction: “For the most part there’s a general disdain. […]

South San Francisco may be “THE INDUSTRIAL CITY,” as stated on the hillside overlooking the town of warehouses and industrial parks on the outskirts of SFO. But nestled alongside Sign Hill Park, which hosts the moniker, is a patch of land that’s remarkably wild for its location and among the last of its kind in […]

Wednesday’s nature news digest has arrived! Who’s the highest mercury polluter in Bay Area? A Cupertino lime mine, which released 260 lbs into air in 2011. Air regulators are cracking down. [KQED News Fix] If you believe the birds – who doesn’t? – this year will bring an early winter and plenty of rain and […]

One recent sunny morning a young coyote lounged on the fairway of San Francisco’s Lincoln Park Golf Course, unphased by the whizzing golf balls and carts. Over the past decade coyotes have become part of the city’s scenery, including Lands End and the adjacent Lincoln Park Golf Course. “You mostly see them early in the […]

What does South Africa and Sonoma County have in common? Both suffer from debilitating shortages of public funds for parks. In the aftermath of the California state parks crisis, parks advocates in Sonoma County are scouting around for enterprising ideas on how to create long term, sustainable revenue streams for five state parks that are […]

San Rafael’s culturally diverse Canal neighborhood is well known for its bustling community centers and family owned businesses. But until now, the 5,000 residents who live here have lacked direct access to garden harvested produce. Earlier this month, residents gathered to celebrate the ground-breaking of the Canal community garden. “ I have lived in the Canal […]

Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the Franciscan manzanita to the federal endangered species list and proposed new critical habitat in San Francisco for this famous flowering shrub. The critical habitat designation, though only in draft form for public comment, is a first for San Francisco. “There is no other critical habitat […]

On September 15, tens of thousands of volunteers will participate in California Coastal Cleanup Day, donning work gloves to gather up the tonnage of manmade debris along California’s coastal regions and inland waterways. They’ll certainly find the usual trash along the beach: cigarette filters, beverage bottles, candy wrappers, plastic utensils. But even the most conscientious […]

On Wednesday, September 12, officials from several state and federal agencies will hold a public briefing to explain a new, if low-tech, effort to head off a twelfth straight year of fish kills at Pescadero Marsh State Beach. For the past 11 years, and 13 of the last 17, federally protected steelhead trout have died […]

Sebastian Kennerknecht has eight shots in our upcoming October-December issue, more than any other photographer this time around. Partly that’s because he agreed to go out and shoot at the Farallon Islands for a story by Glen Martin about seabird nesting trends on that crucial nesting site. But the photo that really caught my eye […]

Happy Monday news digest: Rich people have a lot more trees than poor people, according to research into “green” income inequality. The U.S. Forest Service and other groups are taking notice and trying to bridge the green divide so that trees are not only a form of decoration but part of the infrastructure fabric of […]

What’s in a name? A new bill passed today in Sacramento changes the name of California Department Fish & Game to “Fish & Wildlife.” It may sound symbolic more than anything else. But the bill’s author, Assemblymember Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, believes it more accurately emphasizes the broader mission of the state agency, which is […]

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District is embarking on it’s first major foray into managing rangelands with the planning of the Purisima-To-The-Sea trail, which connects the Santa Cruz mountains to Highway 1. The district has adopted a policy of “conservation grazing” — using livestock to control the spread of invasive species, boost the natives, and prevent […]

Your Wednesday news digest: The Franciscan manzanita, discovered in the Doyle Drive project as the last remaining wild specimen of its species, is now listed as endangered. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made the decision and in so doing designated 11 areas in San Francisco to protected land where the flowering bush could be […]

Early in our work on each issue of the magazine, we send out a call for photos to more than 400 local photographers and artists. The idea is maybe they have some images on file that fit with stories we have in the next issue. It always feels a bit like a leap of faith. […]

Work in a tall building? Here’s something you can do this fall for birds. Get your building manager to participate in the Lights Out for Birds program to reduce the numbers of bird collisions into tall buildings during the fall migratory season, which has just begun. It’s as simple as closing the shades, or turning […]

Fabled as a wily shape-shifter and trickster, the coyote’s latest magic trick has been turning cities into habitat, and San Francisco is one of its latest acts. Coyotes may have evolved in the plains and deserts of Mexico and North America, but they’ve rapidly expanded their range and are now making new homes for themselves […]

Bringing you a bit of news on Friday. Happy Labor Day! It comes “once in a blue moon” — and that happens to be tonight. A rare blue moon will light up the sky. It won’t actually be blue. The lunar event means there are two full moons in the same calendar month. You’ll get […]

The universe: sparse matter, mostly vacuum. Almost every year since 2004, Dave Grossman and Pat Mundy have installed a temporary scale model of the solar system on Stinson Beach to highlight the grand emptiness of much of the universe. Grossman and Mundy met as undergraduates at Berkeley where Grossman studied electrical engineering and computer science, […]

It’s Labor Day weekend and you’ve stayed close to home to avoid the crowds and the traffic jams, so where can you go for a little nature adventure? The beach might be cold and foggy; inland might be too warm, with the grasses all brown and spiky. So where to go? Here, some handpicked hikes from the […]

Your Wednesday news digest. Enjoy! A bobcat kitten may be the most photogenic victim of the fire that’s been raging in the Plumas and Lassen national forests. The kitten followed firefighters after turning up dazed and with troubled vision. She’s now in recuperating with burned paws and infected eyes at the Tahoe Wildlife Rehab Center. [San Francisco […]

What the Vaux swift lacks in size it makes up for in numbers. The smallest species of the swift family has chosen a chimney at a boarding school in Healdsburg as the spot to rest for a few days and tank up on insects before proceeding South for the winter. The swifts began arriving at Rio […]

Good morning! Your top nature news for Monday: Coyotes have been moving into a San Jose community, alarming the neighbors who are unused to sharing their habitat. The coyotes have reportedly killed domestic cats and have been howling in front yards. [San Jose Mercury News] Young ranchers are returning to farms in West Marin after […]

As fascinating as bats are, they, like all wild creatures, come with a warning label. While rabies is far from on the rise among humans and domesticated animals in America, it still exists among wild animals, including bats. The recent discovery of five rabid bats in San Francisco’s Lake Merced neighborhood created a significant stir […]

Water desalination may seem too costly and too riddled with complications to go anywhere fast. But that doesn’t mean water managers are giving up hope. Faced with an uncertain future of diminishing water supplies, officials are floating plans for 17 desalination plants in California, and an additional two in Baja, Mexico that would serve the […]

Happy Friday! One of the busiest waters off the California coast – the ocean west of the Golden Gate Bridge – could become a marine sanctuary if the Obama administration has its way. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has proposed expanding the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which stretches from the Marin Headlands […]

“Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.” —Mary Oliver See this hike mapped: Muddy Hollow Trail This short (1.5 mile), gentle walk follows the course of Muddy Hollow Creek from the parking lot at the trailhead downstream to the shoreline […]

Some Bay Area kids have never seen a star in the sky or even know what a tree is. The Regional Parks Foundation is working to change that. We recently chatted with Nancy Baglietto, Director of Operations, Programs and Development about the programs supported by the Regional Parks Foundation, a sole-purpose Foundation in support of the […]

Move over, birds. There is another flying – albeit more elusive– species drawing summer crowds. Warmer weather and longer twilights make it ideal to watch some of the coolest little critters in the Bay Area — bats! Here are the facts. There are 24 species of bats in California and they’ve nudged their way into […]

No way! This guy went out to photograph birds off the coast of San Luis Obispo, and check out the photographs he came back with. Proving that the krill bonanza along the Pacific Coast this year must be heaven for humpbacks and other whales [Huffington Post] Gov. Jerry Brown is joining business groups — including […]

Time for Monday’s News Digest West Nile-carrying mosquitoes are beginning to swarm. Conta Costa and Santa Clara Counties have begun fogging several cities with pyrethrin and are treating water in catch basins under sidewalk storm drains. The potential deadly disease is spread through mosquitoes, with birds as the incubator, before reaching humans. A Contra Costa […]

Right after completing his undergraduate degree in biological sciences at UC Davis, Fresno-born Mike Lynes went to work out in the field. But after working as a scientist for several years, he realized that his skills and interests lay in the area of law. So he went back to school to study law at UC […]

Nice weekend! Here’s your Friday news digest. As climate change ramps up, scientists are finding it’s not just temperature that impacts where a species moves. Precipitation is also important, and a species can be torn asunder with these two pressures, according to a UC Berkeley study of changes in bird ranges in Lassen Volcanic, Yosemite, […]

The California quail is the inspiration for a San Francisco restaurant that just made America’s top new eating house — the whimsically named State Bird Provisions. Fortunately, the official state bird is not actually on the menu because it numbers fewer than a dozen individuals in San Francisco today, given the loss of brush habitat […]

‘Zombee’ season is about to peak in September, and zombee researchers are asking for help to track its spread. It’s Night of the Living Dead for honeybees infected with a nasty parasitic fly that makes the normally diurnal species go on suicidal night flights. The bees are often found gravitating toward bright lights, and acting […]

A long, wavy greenish-brown kelp dangles off the docks at South Beach Marina by AT&T Park in San Francisco. It may seem like the seaweed belongs there, but it’s an invasive kelp from Asia, known as Undaria pinnatifida. It’s so ubiquitous that efforts to remove it at South Beach Marina have been virtually abandoned. “[The] […]

Glad to have you at Wednesday’s News Digest: UC Davis is America’s “coolest school,” says Sierra Magazine because of its climate change initiatives, including a student-run transit line, bike-friendly transportation, and the reuse of 70 percent of campus trash. Stanford University comes in third. [Sacramento Bee] Reservoirs in the West are drying up, and apparently […]

Happy Monday! Here’s your Monday Bay Nature news digest. Don’t eat Drakes Bay oysters right now. The public health department shut down operations because three people came down with food poisoning after eating the oysters, the result of a serious bacteria, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, which occurs naturally at this time of year in coastal waters. Guess the old […]

A visit to Abbott’s Lagoon always proves rewarding and never fails to offer a fresh experience. I’ve strolled down to the main lagoon dozens of times over the years and each visit is unique and memorable.

Mark your calendars for September 9th! EcoFair Marin is back, and even better this year, with over 80 exhibits, do-it- yourself demonstrations and speakers, including author Van Jones, as keynote presenter. Inspired by San Rafael’s Climate Action Plan and presented in partnership with Seven-Star, this community event celebrates Marin County’s rich heritage of innovative environmental stewardship. […]

It’s always a red-letter day at the Bay Nature office when we get a visit from Jack Laws (aka John Muir Laws, wildlife artist extraordinaire and the man behind the Naturalist’s Notebook in the back of every issue of Bay Nature). Jack was here to drop off his October page (stay tuned for the fight of […]

My current beach reading has the usual ingredients: a steamy love triangle, a pitched battle between mortal enemies, and colorful characters cavorting in exotic locales. This is no dime-store novel, though, but an homage to the North American prairie entitled Prairie Spring (2009), and the only sand to be found is in prairie dog burrows. […]

After six months of fundraising, the nonprofit Friends of China Camp raised $250,000, enough money to take over operations of the cultural and historical landmark along the northwest shores of the San Francisco Bay. Just one day after assuming the state’s responsibilities, the news broke that the California Department of Parks and Recreation had stashed […]

Time for Friday’s news digest: It’s cooking this weekend. Get ready for triple-digit temperatures this weekend in some parts of the Bay Area as our first major heat wave descends. [San Jose Mercury News] Heat is something most Californians believe is happening to global temperatures. A poll finds that a strong majority of Californians – 79 […]

While park advocates around the state expressed shock and anger over the discovery of a secret stash of $54 million in the state parks department, the city of Benicia kept its cool. “I was surprised there was that large a surplus,” said Mario Giuliani, Benicia’s manager of economic development. “But that’s not enough money to […]

For the sake of saving money or living more sustainably, the “staycation” is becoming ever more popular. But what can you do to have fun when keeping close to home? Holly Kernan of KALW 91.7 FM explains on her daily radio show Your Call the many websites listing free things to do in San Francisco. […]

Birds are singing. Children are laughing and playing in patches of sunlight. And I am strolling through large fields of grass here at Berkeley’s San Pablo Park, aiming my camera at flocks of finches, sparrows — anything with wings — looking for flashes of sapphire blue. “Are you here for the bluebirds?” asks a friendly […]

You’ve probably heard about Northern California’s bumper crop of salmon this year. Fishermen are going nuts, hauling in their catch before noon. And it may seem like great news for the survival of this struggling species. But hold down your enthusiasm. About 90 percent of those fish are from state hatcheries, which means they are […]

On Sunday, La Loma Path was added to the network of approximately 140 walkways that meander between houses and streets in the Berkeley hills. The network of green passageways make a perfect outing when there’s no time to head to Tilden or Wildcat Canyon. The bramble of unruly plants are refreshingly wild compared to the […]

Rodeo Lagoon in the Marin Headlands is the place to go right now to watch a rare migratory shorebird that enacts a fascinating swap in gender roles. In late July into the first half of August, red-necked phalaropes descend on the eastern end of the lagoon to tank up on tiny crustaceans and insects. The 8-inch […]

If you went to the farmer’s market this weekend, as I did, you probably saw the summer bounty in full swing. Lots of peppers and melons, peaches and zucchini. And of course, tomatoes piled in heaps. The rest of the country doesn’t seem to be faring quite as well under the worst drought in 50 […]

The California clapper rail may not be the most distinguished of birds, at least on appearance. Except for the flash of bright orange in its beak, this saltmarsh critter-eater is a mottled gray-brown, about the size of a chicken. But what it lacks in pizzazz, it seems to make up for in personality. Clappers, as […]

“To find new things, take the path you took yesterday.” —John Burroughs I was thinking about John Burroughs, “the Grand Old Man of Nature,” as I walked the trails that climb from Bear Valley up to Inverness Ridge. Although I’ve covered this terrain in years past, today it seems new, freshened. Maybe I’ve never been […]

Let this photo of a gray kit fox inspire you to take to the trails this weekend and discover some little treasure of nature that will make your heart sing. For more on photographer Jen Joynt’s recent adventure with the fox, check out her blog. In the meantime, here’s a brief line-up of today’s nature […]

You may have heard of Walk Score, the walkability index that everyone from real estate agents to smart growth advocates use to assess how pedestrian friendly the area is around a specific address. Well, joining the ratings stage now is Street Nature Score, which is attempting to do the same sort of thing but with […]

Pacific Leatherback Turtles have been spotted in the coastal waters south of San Francisco earlier than ever before. Sightings of sea turtles are rapidly approaching last years’ 23, with 17 showing off their thick shells so far, and it’s earlier than their usual arrival time in August. “That’s pretty amazing. There’s still a lot that […]

I never quite know what I might find when I set out with my camera, my binoculars, and my wandering eyes. Recently, I headed out in Tilden Nature Area, one of my regular haunts, hoping to find fun wildlife to photograph. And I did, although not quite what I was expecting. About a quarter mile […]

California has been suddenly thrown into one of its perennial water wars, this time with a revived proposal to build a pair of 37-mile tunnels under the Delta to transport water to users and farmers across the state. If you’ve been following the news, it’s a a bit of an environmental crapshoot. The tunnels are […]

It’s certainly not hard to apply words like “outrageous” and “appalling” to the current scandal surrounding $54 million dollars in funding for state parks that had gone unspent and undiscovered for over ten years. But it’s not going to do our beleagured parks any good to engage in overheated rhetoric about corrupt and incompetent government […]

Welcome to the new BayNature.org! We’ve just relaunched this site in a big way, and we’re pretty excited about what you’ll find here: A brand-new interactive trailfinder with 100 trails and maps, photos, and basic information on more than 400 local parks. We have about 100 more trails lined up in the queue to get into the […]

Welcome to Bay Nature’s first News Digest post. We’ll be updating you regularly on the top nature news reported in the Bay Area with the hopes that you’ll feel connected to what’s going on around here. We do this by reading and culling news stories from dozens and dozens of sources each day, something we […]

The co-founder of the influential nonprofit conservation group Save Mount Diablo, Arthur D. Bonwell, died at 85 at his home in Concord, California. The trained electrical engineer for Dupont made a second career in conservation, recognizing that the state was doing little to protect the lands in and around Mount Diablo. In 1971, he co-founded […]

The city of Richmond is making progress is closing gaps along the San Francisco Bay Trail that have been practically inaccessible to the public. A key 1-mile linkage under the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge will allow pedestrians and bicyclists to get to Point Molate and the rest of the Point San Pablo Peninsula without having to […]

Downtown San Francisco doesn’t typically spring to mind when planning an outdoor excursion. But get past the crowded streets and there’s a multitude of lovely open spaces, replete with honest to goodness foliage. In fact, the city boasts a large number of privately owned, publicly open spaces (also known as POPOS), providing a haven from […]

Recent high-school graduate Zane Moore is sitting — or rather towering — with the masters of tall tree finders. This summer Moore, 18, embarked on a mission to measure and record the locations of some of the tallest trees in the world: the coastal redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains. After traipsing day in and […]

After years working in office buildings, marketing executive Corinne DeBra was ready to get outside – and get outside she did! In 2009 she launched a walk around the entire perimeter of San Francisco Bay – logging 1,000 miles. Two years later, she decided to do it again.

You always know essentially where to find it: just aim yourself toward the western horizon, and go. At the road’s end, the trail’s end, the far end of that last dune-trudge or bluff-scramble, it’s there: a great conjunction of land, sky, and sea. North America meets Pacific Ocean.

There’s a lot more to the Napa Valley than wineries and fancy food. Look closely and the landscape reveals clues to a past full of greater ecological complexity, from beaver ponds to vast freshwater marshes. New research into that history may point the way to a more biodiverse future.

San Francisco residents are well-acquainted with the seagulls and pigeons in their midst. Take a closer at the green spaces amid the cityscape and you’ll notice one of most beautifully understated wild residents: the swallowtail butterfly.

It may be hard to believe, but poison oak is not the bogeyman of the forest. As a California native plant, many an animal has sought nourishment or shelter in its “leaves of three,” immune to the toxic oil that plagues humans. This versatile plant, a member of the cashew family, may never get over its inherent antagonistic relationship with hikers and gardeners, it may be nevertheless worth a nod of respect.

The 1991 Oakland Hills firestorm left no doubt that big fires happen in the East Bay. Now, the East Bay Regional Park District is fighting fire with fire at Redwood Regional Park, one part of a massive effort to reduce fire danger across thousands of acres in the East Bay Hills.

Rich Stallcup is viewed by the ornithological community as a “legend in his own time” for the breadth and depth of his knowledge, and for his commitment to education and conservation. He is one of the founders of Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now PRBO Conservation Science). We spoke with Stallcup about his largely self-taught background in ornithology and about PRBO’s work.

Last night, for the first time in their 132-year rivalry, the San Francisco Giants swept the L.A. Dodgers with a shutout. This morning my granddaughter, Kalia, took her first steps and the Supreme Court upheld “Obamacare.” To celebrate, I decided to take a long “walkabout.”

This past week I received a flurry of excited emails from Robert Hanna, the great great grandson of John Muir, who has possessed a fierce determination to keep open every state park in California slated for closure. On Friday he celebrated victory at the State Capitol in Sacramento after learning that all but one of the 70 parks on the closure list will stay open.

Point Reyes for millennia provided rich habitat to a diversity of plant and animal species. Its discovery and settlement by Europeans and then Americans altered the landscape, but not irretrievably. And thanks to some determined visionaries, the peninsula and its habitats were protected 50 years ago.

When I started visiting Point Reyes in the 1970s, the landscape from Limantour Beach up to the crest of Inverness Ridge had a special appeal. I had spent my early childhood in the New England countryside in the 1940s, so vestiges of the pre-Seashore ranching days made me nostalgic–homestead sites, dammed lakes, fence lines, timothy hay growing in old fields. On the other hand, watching the wild ecosystem come back, with its brush rabbits, jackrabbits, quail, hawks, and bobcats, was endlessly fascinating.

The looming bulk of Mount Hamilton is a familiar sight to anyone driving Highway 101 through the Santa Clara Valley. At 4,196 feet, it’s the tallest peak visible from the shores of San Francisco Bay. This is the most expansive wild landscape in the Bay Area: roughly 700,000 acres of public parks, university and conservancy reserves, and private ranches. Now it’s also become a living laboratory for studying the affects of climate change.

Three days after the Indian–I’ll call him Fidel–avenged the assault on his wife and slayed the young rancher who’d committed the horrible deed, the posse of vigilantes pursuing him found him, not near the small settlement of Marshall, but across Tomales Bay on a ridge; and not in a thicket of coyote bush and low-growing fir where he might’ve hidden, but in the middle of an open grassland.

The shrublands of the Point Reyes National Seashore, which include the northern coastal scrub and maritime chaparral, hooked me long ago with their vibrant charms. Found on slopes within the influence of the sea, they hug the land as tightly as a knitted sweater, shrugging off the challenges of wind, salt spray, and fog.

Dawn. Spring tide. Fog shrouds the estuary. A shore-cast tree trunk–contorted, branching skyward–rests in the shallows. On its twisted branches roost a half-dozen cormorants, some with wings outstretched or akimbo, others standing upright, necks coiled into graceful question marks. That congregation, silhouetted by the morning light, suspended on the rising tide between the pewter sky and the mercurial bay, conjures a prehistoric diorama, a world awaiting sunlight parables.

Walk any Bay Area trail and your kids might marvel at the views, the wildlife, or the gurgling of a creek–but the variety of geometrical shapes? That takes a junior nerd or somebody interested in making abstract classroom ideas concrete.

Every day, east of Highway 24’s Caldecott Tunnel, thousands of commuters hurtle–or crawl–past a fine swath of the East Bay’s glorious greenbelt, where just off the highway, the north trailhead of Sibley Volcanic Preserve invites exploration.

It’s early on a weekday morning, and Chris Pincetich is sifting through a small pile of debris on Stinson Beach. He’s at the high-water mark, called the wrack line. That’s where buoyant ocean flotsam gets stuck as the tide goes out. As we walk along, he stops and points out how plastic strapping looks a lot like weathered eelgrass. Pincetich isn’t your ordinary beachcomber. He’s a scientist trying to compile a local data set for a global problem: marine plastic pollution.

As we prepared this article in April 2012, we were saddened to learn that environmental pioneer Ernest Callenbach passed away at home in Berkeley with his family at his side. We’re honored to publish this interview with the author of “Ecoptia” and other seminal books.

A cuckoo wasp is one of those remarkable animals that appears for just a few seconds and makes you wonder what the heck you just saw. Fast-moving and no larger than a skinny housefly, these wasps stand out nonetheless: They glow an outrageous iridescent blue-green, as if illuminated from within.

Point Reyes Peninsula is rimmed along its rocky sections with a living fringe so diverse and wildly colorful – so dense with phenomenal creatures – that when the tides recede there’s a gravitational pull to go there and explore. Tidepools are literally the wilderness next door, yet accessible only when the moon and sun conspire to exert extra pull on the Earth’s oceanic sheath, thereby exposing the coastline. May through July is one of the two periods in the year when extreme low tides occur.

Mike Hamilton, director of the Blue Oak Ranch Reserve on Mount Hamilton, describes himself as a “digital naturalist.” He’s wired the reserve’s 3,260 acres with sensors, sent up drone helicopters, and even set up a “Robosquirrel” in an effort to find out how climate change is impacting the region’s ecosystem.

With golden summer hillsides and enticing mosaics of forest and field, the grasslands of California are iconic. Yet few people realize that some of those grasslands are actually coastal prairie, one of the most diverse—and most endangered—ecosystems in the world.Today less than 5 percent of this vibrant habitat remains comparatively intact. Much has been lost to more than a century of fire suppression, development, tilling and invasion by non-native species.

Jules Evens has lived next to the Point Reyes National Seashore for most of his four decades in the Bay Area. With the park’s 50th anniversary at hand, Jules decided to honor this milestone by trekking every one of of the Seashore’s 154 miles of trails on foot.

Tree squirrels can seem marginal in cities. But in the bishop pine forests at Point Reyes National Seashore, Western gray squirrels are the only animals known to open pine cones and disperse the seeds. They are bold, sizable, and entirely wild — unlike their urban cousins. And their sheer bravado shows what a spirited creature a squirrel can be.

As the Bay Area struggles to meet sustainability goals, double-digit population growth presents a clear challenge to reducing the region’s ecological footprint. Residents must use resources more efficiently to counteract the addition of more than a million new residents. In many ways, it mirrors a challenge the planet is facing. Can population growth in San Francisco and the Bay Area be sustainable?

Chaparral and scrublands are often overlooked, dismissed even, as valuable habitat in places like Point Reyes National Seashore. But the unassuming assemblage of low-lying shrubs and herbs are the right tools for the job in many difficult landscape situations, and hold a beauty of their own. Perhaps it’s time to rethink scrublands as a rightful native habitat, good in the wild and garden.

128 miles. 12,000 feet elevation gain. 17-plus hours of exercise. 3 mountain summits. 3 transit agencies. Add to that temperatures well into the triple digits in some places, and you’ve got the makings of a great story.That’s about all you need to know to get an impression of how grueling the event known as Alt. Ride (formerly the Triple Threat) was this year.

As I write this note at the beginning of March, we’re enjoying our sixth weekend in a row without rain, spanning a period that’s generally the height of the Bay Area’s rainy season. For those of us who work all week and like to play outside on the weekends, this is great . . . […]

Locals to the Bay Area often don’t think for a moment about the hazards of ticks when exploring nature. But maybe they should. Ticks carry Lyme disease, a debilitating condition caused by a bacterial infection ticks pick up from biting deer and mice. “If you don’t mind looking like a nerd, tuck pants into socks,” said a UC Berkeley entomologist.

A recent study has proven the obvious: San Francisco Bay is a major conduit for invasive species. And the biggest culprit? Cargo ships and their ballast water. Environmentalists are now pushing for new treatment requirements to stem the tide of alien species.

Robin Grossinger directs San Francisco Estuary Institute’s Historical Ecology Program. Grossinger’s team uses hundreds of historical texts, photographs, and survey maps to depict what the Bay Area used to look like to help inform present and future stewardship, including several extensive restoration projects around the region.

Jules Evens continues his year-long trek on all the trails of Point Reyes. this time out, it’s the Bayview Trail, short on views but long on wildlife and the interesting ecological processes of the bishop pine forest, much of which burned in the 1995 Vision Fire.

If you plan on getting outdoors this summer, you’ll probably be bringing your smart phone with you. Forgo the hefty guidebooks and consider tapping into some of the great mobile apps out there. We reviewed our Top 10 for the Bay Area so you’ll be ready to identify that flash of wing through the trees, ramble around Golden Gate Park without getting lost, or kayak the San Francisco Bay with real-time current updates.

Sean FitzHoward has a head start on contributing to local conservation. At 16, the high school junior has already completed an internship with The Bay Institute. Now she’s volunteering with the California Academy of Sciences. She also founded and runs the Protect the Bay Club at San Francisco’s Lowell High School. We caught up with her at Crissy Field to talk about her passion for local environmental action.

Ellie Cohen became president and CEO of what is now PRBO Conservation Science in 1999. Under her leadership, the organization has grown from the local Point Reyes Bird Observatory, founded in 1965, to a hemisphere-scale operation, conducting bird-focused applied ecosystem studies on land and at sea. PRBO uses its wealth of data and partnerships to assess and reduce the impacts of changes in climate and land use on ecosystem health.

It used to be that you needed guidebooks and an experienced friend to get up to speed on identifying a flash of wing through the trees. These days, however, newbie birders can become instant experts with technological tools like mobile apps. But how does technology change the nature of bird-watching? And what are the ethics pitfalls when finding a bird is so easy?

The Bucharest native says that right now there is a great variety of trees and shrubs growing in Berkeley, and even some “bottled water” crops like lemons and rosemary that you should never, ever, buy at the store. They are so plentiful, it simply makes no sense. Ionescu-Zanetti create Edible Cities, a crowd-sourced site that maps food for foraging.

Nancy Shelby, director of the theater group Word for Word Performing Arts Company, is taking on the work of Native American storyteller Greg Sarris. In a new piece, they explore the legends and history of Sonoma Mountain. Shelby says theater goes back to the village coming together in an exploration of what it means to be human.

When I’m hungry I usually go to a place where someone brings me a plate of hot food. Birds, on the other hand, actually work for theirs.You may think you work too, but when was the last time your food escaped or scratched back? It’s a jungle out there and predators exist in the guise of a pretty bird standing on long legs, or performing amazing aerial acrobatics.

One of the impacts of the economic recession over the last few years has been less interest in developing the Bay Area’s remaining open space.A new report released on Tuesday by Greenbelt Alliance finds that a down real estate market, combined with public policies to restrict growth, has led to a 20 percent drop in the amount of Bay Area land “at risk” for development, compared to six years ago.An estimated 77,300 acres is no longer in the immediate cross-hairs of developers and suburban planners, according to At Risk: The Bay Area Greenbelt 2012. And some 3 million acres total are now protected.

The Hayward regional shoreline consists of over a thousand acres of marshes and seasonal wetlands. At low tide sandpipers and black stilts wander about the mud flats searching for food, while cyclists and runners exercise along a 5-mile trail.It’s hard to imagine that more than a hundred years ago, mounds of salt covered these same Hayward marshes like a fresh blanket of snow. The salt attracted harvesters, going way back to the original inhabitants.

Berkeley’s zoning codes have prohibited the sale of backyard produce. But after an effort mounted by the green thumbs of the city, the planning commission unanimously passed the Edible Garden Initiative. Next step: City Council.

A partial solar eclipse will be lighting up Bay Area skies early Sunday evening, and as luck would have it the weather is supposed to cooperate.Between 5:16pm and 7:40 pm, the moon will pass in front of the sun in an alignment not seen in 18 years. During the annular solar eclipse, the moon will form a “black hole” in the center of the sun with sunbeams shooting out from the sides.

Working off historical records of rare plant locations, plant “hunters” on Mount Tamalpais are scouring the mountain in search of the illusive Mason’s ceanothus shrub and other botanical novelties. The goal: update the location and numbers of California rare plants in the California Natural Diversity Database.

What’s the cutest fish in the sea? To some biologists, it’s the bat ray, which cruises along the floor of local bays and estuaries, chomping on clams and other creatures. Maybe it’s time to make bottom-feeder a term of endearment! Springtime is breeding time for these friendly fish.

Jessie Raeder was an energetic high school student when a bitter dispute erupted over the use of chemicals to eradicate pike in Lake Davis in favor of native trout. Nowadays she’s director of Paddle to the Sea, a month long “paddle-a-thon” that begins in June and runs the 241-mile length the Tuolumne River from the Sierras to the San Francisco Bay. The goal: raise awareness and money for the river’s benefactor, the Tuolumne River Trust.

Humans may be the only animals who celebrate Mother’s Day. But there’s no doubt that babies of other species are just as attached to their mamas, at least until they grow up. I like to think they also get a warm, fuzzy feeling when they think of the female who risked life and limb to bring them into the world and raise them fit enough to prosper. Happy Mother’s Day to California mamas of all feathers and fur, fins and … yes, even those with exoskeletons.

Over the course of two short months, great horned owls hatched and raised an owlet on a trail in Claremont Canyon in Berkeley. A “bird’s eye” view of the nest made it possible for passersby to get an intimate look at the owlet’s transformation from hatchling to fledgling. But as the popularity of the nesting owls grew, so did the ethical questions. How can so many people enjoy nature without doing it harm?

How do you develop a booming Oakland when there’s a big creek in your way? Bury it underground, cement it over, channel it with culverts, and turn it into a gravel quarry. Sounds like a plan, right?Sausal Creek has undoubtedly taken a lot of abuse. But one thing must be said: Oakland owes much of its economy to the roughly 3-mile creek that meanders from its headwaters in the Oakland Hills to the San Francisco Bay.

The imperiled Lange’s metalmark butterfly lives only on a small stretch of remnant dunes near Antioch. Managers of the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge hope to create precious new habitat, while a captive-breeding program keeps the butterflies just short of extinction.

On a typical spring day in early May at the Gill Tract, UC Berkeley agriculture researchers would be busy preparing for the summer research season.But this year, in a fenced-off field that usually grows experimental crops, a temporary encampment has sprung up. A group of students and others associated with the Occupy movement have rototilled the soil and planted their own vision of the future of farming.

For the past 35 years, Valley of the Moon Natural History Association has been helping greet and educate visitors at the Jack London State Historic Park in Sonoma County.As of May 1, however, it’s taken charge of the whole park: 1,400 acres, 10,000 artifacts, and more than a dozen historic buildings.

Thanks to the nonprofit Kids for the Bay, each year a few thousand kids learn firsthand why those “Drains to Bay” stencils on storm grates are so important — and why eating fish from San Francisco Bay may not always be a good idea.

It’s easy to get depressed about the loss of biodiversity when every day, it seems, some new species pops up on a watch list like a death toll. But there are success stories that offer rays of hope in a world beset by climate change and habitat destruction. A new art exhibit opening on May 1 at the Tilden environmental education center in Berkeley showcases species that have made it back from the brink of extinction.

Originally working in packaged design, Robyn Hodess became a landscape painter after a cross country plane ride sparked her imagination. Her landscapes look like they exist, somewhere, but are actually all from her head. She’s come to see nature differently: “Before, I was looking at it very closely, ‘Oh, look at the bud.’ … Now I’m saying, ‘What are the textures in the world? What are the colors in the world?'”

Candlestick Point State Recreation Area in southeast San Francisco is California’s first urban state park, and offers city-dwellers a slice of nature along the Bay. State budget cuts landed it on the list of park closures, even though a massive redevelopment project next door promises to deliver $50 million to Candlestick.

The last remaining specimen of Franciscan manzanita is happily basking in the sun in an undisclosed location in the Presidio, apparently unaware that conservative talk radio has it out for its survival. Fanning the flames on government spending, shock-jocks are calling its 2010 rescue the “untold story of the year.”

Over 150 volunteers crammed onto a ferry that set sail from Tiburon in honor of upcoming Earth Day this Sunday.Their destination? The hiker’s paradise of Angel Island. With a backdrop of clear skies and a light breeze, the crew on Saturday joined the California State Parks Foundation’s (CSPF) effort to clean up and restore 17 of the state’s neglected parks.

For residents and businesses in the Anderson Valley, 845-acre Hendy Woods State Park has an importance far beyond its size. It’s one of few public open spaces in this mostly rural region, and now residents are doing their best to make a plan to keep the park open.

Brown pelicans don’t often look for collegiate settings to make landings. But one weakened and disoriented female showed up in front of Sproul Hall recently and provided dinner-going passerbys with a reason to pause until a trained wildlife responder by chance appeared and took the bird under her wing. A campus police officer muttered: “This was definitely not covered at the academy.”

McGrath State Beach has plenty of visitors and plenty of revenue. So how did it end up on the closure list? The park’s sewer line was broken, and the state couldn’t afford to fix it. But the local community rallied around the park, raised the money to fix the sewer, and now the park will stay open.

If any landscape can be called iconic, Mono Lake surely makes the cut. But with no revenue, the state park here faced closure–until John Muir’s great-great-grandson joined with local park supporters to rescue the park. With a new parking fee in place, the park is safe, for now.

Lee Van Der Bokke is a world-class geocacher – someone who hides, and searches for, “caches”—hidden containers of different sizes that are tagged and located using GPS (global positioning system) or mobile devices. He says they’re a great way to get people — young and old — exploring nature.

On an overcast day after spring rains, Jules Evens encounters the expected–a banana slug in a lush Douglas fir forest–and the unexpected–a shrew-mole–on a 4-mile hike along Inverness Ridge as part of his Point Reyes Walkabout.

Want to forage in a local park? Chances are it’s not allowed, but some parks do allow limited gathering of edible berries and mushrooms. In January 2012, we gathered up the rules from a couple of dozen agencies. But caveat emptor: they may have changed since then.

Samuel P. Taylor State Park in Marin is a popular destination for many of the millions of people who live within a short drive of this secluded redwood forest. With the park facing closure, the National Park Service stepped in to pay park operating costs.

Local wildlife photographer Jen Joynt observed the release of a rehabilitated golden eagle at Las Trampas Regional Wilderness in San Ramon. The eagle was likely hit by a car in October and suffered a fractured wing. Its successful recovery means it can return to the wild.

After a decade of stalled efforts and 18 months of negotiations, students at Drakes High School in San Anselmo installed a large school garden that will be used by several special programs at the public high school.

Springtime is the season for babies. They’re busy emerging into the world by whatever method they come — by hatch or by birth. With their arrival, some of the youngsters will also need help. The Lindsay Wildlife Museum’s rehabilitation center in Walnut Creek has about 200 babies under its wing right now and expects the number to shoot up even higher in the next couple weeks.

At the northwestern edge of Richmond, near Point Pinole Regional Shoreline, a modest bayshore wetland stands ready to emerge from decades of neglect. Thanks to the residents of nearby Parchester Village and staff of the East Bay Regional Park District, Breuner Marsh will become precious public recreation land and a refuge for sensitive species imperiled by sea level rise.

City dwellers got a taste of live-action wildlife on Friday, when three out of four peregrine falcon eggs hatched in San Francisco.Perched in a nesting box high on a ledge of PG&E’s headquarters building in the financial district, the hatchlings are the newest members of the Bay Area’s steadily growing peregrine falcon population.

Jules Evens continues his quest to hike every trail at Point Reyes National Seashore. Here, he traces a route where he once encountered a mountain lion. This time, the wildlife is a bit tamer, but no less beautiful: red-legged frogs, native bees, wildflowers, and a coyote howl to finish it off.

Just a century ago, foraging for wild foods would have been unremarkable–part of daily life for many people. That’s not true today, but foraging is making a comeback, with ever more people interested in finding food in the wild. But with a growing population and diminishing natural resources, is this sustainable? We head out with local foragers and ask about the ethics of foraging in a metropolis.

Some 70 state parks were scheduled to be closed on July 1, 2012. But determined action by park-loving citizens around the state has succeeded in getting some parks removed from that list and has opened a discussion of the relationship between public parks and the people they serve. We visit four parks around the state to see what the future might hold for our beloved, but beleaguered, state parks.

In the first few months after California announced its park closures in May 2011, park advocates were stunned and outraged. The state was tearing down 25 percent of a world-renowned system—70 parks in all. Almost a year later, the state parks closure cloud still looms, big and black. But dozens of small victories and individual acts of courage are adding a silver lining.

It started out as a patriotic effort to show fellow citizens what they didn’t know they were missing before it was gone. But in her mission to visit and blog about every California state park on the closure list, Lucy D’Mot also discovered some things about herself. “I feel like maybe I missed my calling earlier in life, to be a little more out in the outdoors,” she said.

It’s been just over a year since the devastating earthquake and tsunami wiped away coastal towns in Japan. As communities rebuild and mourn the loss of loved ones, a portion of the 25 million tons of wreckage is now swirling around the ocean and making its way to California shores.It’s a unique research opportunity for scientists who have never before seen such a sudden, massive deposit of ocean debris from a one-time event.

In its haste to eliminate $22 million from its budget, the California parks department took aim at 70 state parks, one-quarter of the system. The strategy: sacrifice a few to save the many. But as citizens got involved to keep their favorite parks from closing, some interesting scenarios have been revealed. Some parks only needed a small shot in the arm, easily given with some simple revenue-generating schemes. Cut first, think later seemed to be the way state officials proceeded in the dark hours of budget cuts.

If you’re fortunate to be hiking Muir Woods at sunset, be sure to keep your ears open and eyes peeled. You may just encounter one of the parks more stealthy inhabitants.On any of the park’s many trails, you may hear the low-pitched “ho-ho-hooo,” of a horned owl, or the distinctive “who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all” hooting of the barred owl. But one owl species remains conspicuously quiet — the northern spotted owl.

It’s been a great season to view California gray whales off the Northern California coast this year. There have been a number of unusual sightings in the San Francisco Bay. But for the best chances to view these 35-ton, graceful giants on their annual migration is at Point Reyes National Seashore. Grab your binoculars, check the weather, and hit the cape.

California state parks advocates are hitting the halls of the Capitol on Tuesday to remind lawmakers that they won’t go away, even though many parks are closing come July. There is no savior bill for state parks on the horizon, not in a year when tax hikes and state budget deficits are on the table. Still, the conversation about the future of California’s 279 park system must continue, said Jerry Emory, spokesperson for the California State Parks Foundation (CSPF).

If you ride your bike in San Francisco, chances are you have discovered The Wiggle, and you’re probably thankful you did. The meandering one-mile route from Duboce Ave to Fell St. saves cyclists from notoriously steep hills as they make their way from downtown to western neighborhoods.There’s a reason why the riding is easy. The bike route was a once stream bed in a place called San Souci Valley, now thoroughly transformed into the Victorian-dotted neighborhoods of Duboce Triangle and the Lower Haight.

Wind power companies are taking a bird’s eye view in siting new turbines in the Altamont Pass.As a major re-powering effort gets underway to replace 50-year-old windmills with fewer and larger ones, the companies are making use of new techniques in risk mapping to avoid the numbers of raptor deaths that have become part of the political fabric of the Altamont Wind Resource Area.

A project out of UC Berkeley recruits citizen scientists to help track the spread of sudden oak death. They do it every spring, and the more people take part, the better the chance we can protect precious oaks from a deadly pathogen.

Photographer Elaine Miller Bond didn’t have far to go to take these beautiful photographs of a coyote and a red-shouldered hawk. They were shot right here in Tilden Regional Park late last year. Read her descriptions of the encounters:

Got rats? As appealing as it may seem to have your rodent intruders done away with the drop of a few blue pellets, the city of San Francisco is telling its citizens: “Don’t take the Bait.”The campaign seeks to turn public opinion away from best-selling rat and mouse poisons for the sake of wildlife and the environment. The trouble is that the poison-infused rodents eventually become toxic prey to any creature higher up on the food chain. Stick to the classic snap trap, officials say.

The vision to create a 550-mile trail around the San Francisco Bay is threatened by state park closures scheduled for this summer, trail advocates say.The Bay Area Ridge Trail may not be the target of California state budget cuts, but because it runs through four state parks that are on the chopping block, advocates are worried about its future. As the July 1 deadline approaches on state park closures, the trail advocates say it’s still unclear how trail access, maintenance, and public safety will be handled, as well as what happens to long term prospects for connecting new trails to the loop.

It’s showtime. What better way to spend a blustery day in early March than to visit the two green film festivals in San Francisco? This year’s line-up features a number of films from Bay Area filmmakers and ones that touch on local topics. Among them is Bay Area filmmaker Jon Shenk’s “The Island President” about how the recently ousted leader of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, is trying to save his country from being the first obliterated by sea level rise. In an interview, Shenk explains why all coastal cities — including Bay Area cities — should take what’s happening in the Maldives to heart.

A group of renegade agricultural activists is challenging the notion that nothing comes for free by grafting fruit-bearing branches onto trees lining city streets.Over the past year, the Guerrilla Grafters – a diverse group of volunteers who started in San Francisco – has been splicing fruit-bearing branches onto ornamental fruit trees around the city in an effort to grow apples, cherries, pears, and other fresh produce that urban residence can enjoy for free.

The San Francisco Bay model is running wet again, now that the dust has settled on a nearly 2-year renovation project. The scale replica of the bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta system has been largely out of the public eye — and dry — as construction crews upgraded the building and installed new exhibits and solar panels. Now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which runs the 1.5 acre model on a sea-front building in Sausalito, is welcoming visitors again, starting with a grand re-opening celebration on Saturday.

Inspired by a teaching stint with inner-city kids 20 years ago, English-born teacher Mandi Billinge founded an organization that gives thousands of Bay Area children their first hands-on experience with nature.

Whether you’re looking for lessons in seed saving or hikes in nature, you’ll find them in the hills above Los Altos at Hidden Villa, which was home to the region’s first youth hostel and interracial summer camp.

In west Petaluma, a hilly, treeless plot of land will be declared the Paula Lane Nature Preserve next month because of the tenacious work of local residents who were inspired by an equally tenacious creature — the American badger.

This year, five burrowing owls have been documented at the Berkeley marina. The small ground-dwelling birds spend much of the day sitting alertly near their burrows, astonishingly close to all those humans with dogs, kites and strollers.

New artificial islands at Oakland’s Arrowhead Marsh provide some welcome refuge for endangered clapper rails. But can they be expanded into enough other habitats to keep the birds safe from rising sea levels?

Now you see it. Now you don’t. Jim Denevan creates art –very large art — out of the most ephemeral media: patterns in sand which will wash away with the tide, tracings in the earth that will disappear with the first rain, etchings upon icy lakes that must melt with the coming of spring. Beach aficionados know him as “that surfer dude,” but his artwork is reminiscent of masters like Christo and Goldsworthy.

Scientists and citizen scientists may share a love of nature, but they have few tools to exchange information. A new online tool called the Bay Area Bio-Atlas seeks to deepen those links in an effort to provide a real-time field guide to the region’s flora and fauna.

Berkeley Assemblymember Nancy Skinner muses about an early internship gathering park data, how local governments are leading the world on environmental issues, and why she wants to make reflective roofs as popular as recycling.

The Presidio in San Francisco is a forested oasis, home to around 300 bird species. But once upon a time, the park was coastal dunes with nutrient-poor, shifting soils. Just how the Presidio was transformed is a story of one man’s grand ambitions that are still playing out today, as stewards of the Presidio struggle to maintain a forest as an historic landmark.

Stunned bobcats, entangled geese, sea-foamed birds – sound like the makings of a horror film? These are just a few of the creatures given a new chance at life by WildRescue, a Bay Area organization that delivers wildlife in distress to animal health clinics.

Now that the winter rains have finally found us here along the central California coast, my attention focuses on finding weather windows for walks in the wild. During a gentle shower, or a just after a stormy squall, the forests and fields are freshened and it’s a fine time to take to the trail.

Petaluma photographer Scott Hess never shied from a debate about conservation. He’s hiked, admittedly illicitly, around Lafferty Ranch to reveal the property’s hidden beauty, and once snapped pinups of “ecobabes” for a calendar on climate change. In this Q&A, Hess explains how his activism and photography intersect, and the pitfalls of doing what you love most.

Sharp Park is at the center of a controversy over whether golfing can coexist with endangered species. The Pacifica course, which overlooks the ocean, is a unique coastal freshwater ecosystem with a lagoon that’s great for the California red-legged frog and San Francisco garter snake. But if you want to keep the fairways open to business, much of that water has to be pumped away.

Proponents of the Yolo Bypass Floodplain Fishery Enhancement Project are starting small but thinking big. During the first year of the pilot project, scientists will test whether raising juvenile chinook salmon on flooded rice fields in the Yolo Bypass will help the fish get stronger and bigger before being flushed down to San Francisco Bay and out to the Pacific.

A seasoned climber, hiker, outdoorsman, and lifelong world traveler, Craig Anderson could have remained an “itinerant geographer and outdoor guide”. Instead, he moved to Sonoma County fifteen years ago, signed up to work for a brand-new nonprofit called LandPaths, and stayed.

Thousands of elephant seals have colonized beaches to partake in annual, combative mating rituals. The mass of beached blubber is not just a tourist spectacle. It also draws the attention of non-human species that come to dine off the rare bump in food supply. About 10 percent of the pups born are casualties of the fighting males.

The cash-strapped city of Benicia has come up with a novel way to keep its local state recreation area open and off the list of California park closures: get the state to foot the bill. The city says it can operate the 500-acre park at less than half the state’s budget.

The Bear Valley trail, heading southwest from Park Headquarters to the coast, is one of the emblematic walks, and the most traveled trail, on the Point Reyes Peninsula. Jules covers about 10 miles and encounters a bobcat, an alligator lizard, early-blooming milkmaids, and very late-blooming Indian paintbrush.

To launch our new series on climate change in the Bay Area, we follow a group of researchers as they scan the bottom, poke the mud, and gauge the tides at Marin’s Corte Madera Marsh, in the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary effort to understand how the Bay Area’s tidal wetlands will respond to rising sea levels.

With the clock ticking toward a February deadline, the nonprofit Solano Land Trust is working to purchase 1,500 acres of land known as Rockville Trails in Solano County. Recently, a lawsuit put a stop to development plans and allowed the land trust to buy 330 acres of the property, with an option to purchase the remaining 1,170 acres for $15.5 million by February 28, 2012.

A toxic waste dump may seem an unlikely place to stroll around and enjoy the San Francisco Bay. But East Palo Alto is restoring and capping such a site in order to give the public access to the water for the first time. The restoration project will also restore marshlands for struggling species like the clapper rail and salt mouse harvest mouse.

Workers digging the new fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel are getting a once-in-a-lifetime view of one of the defining features of the East Bay: the range of hills that runs from San Pablo Bay south to Fremont. By visiting just a few accessible sites aboveground, you can find clues that tell the story of how these hills rose from their humble origins as deep ocean sediments and volcanic flows to the iconic fault-riddled hillsides of today.

Each year, Bay Nature Institute honors several individuals who are making outstanding contributions to the understanding and stewardship of the natural world of the Bay Area. Here are this year’s winners.

Monarchs may be the most celebrated and regal of the Lepidoptera, and they’re hitting record highs in the Bay Area. Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont is estimating their numbers at 4,200, which is 10 times the normal count. Grab your binoculars.

This New Year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Point Reyes National Seashore, yet another brilliant example of “America’s Best Idea.” To acknowledge and honor this milestone, I have set a personal goal to walk all of the 154 miles of designated trails within the Seashore during 2012, one step at a time.

In spring 2011, the bad news about California’s state parks hit: 70 parks were slated for closure by July 2012, including 18 in the Bay Area. Since then, volunteers, nonprofits, and public agencies have mobilized to contain the damage. At Henry Coe State Park, donations will keep the park running with existing staff. In Sonoma, closure loomed for five parks and groups have joined forces to create new models of park operation.

The Bay Area program of the California Coastal Conservancy has been protecting critical open space landscapes and wetlands around the region for 15 years now. However, the program’s anniversary is bittersweet: The sense of accomplishment from having played a central role in conserving 80,500 acres of valuable habitats and recreational open space is tempered by the knowledge that the program could soon run out of money.

Thornewood Open Space Preserve above the town of Woodside isn’t easy to find–unless you’re a weed. This area is the only site in California where the plant has been found, but this invasive perennial bunchgrass native to Eurasia and North Africa has infested 10,000 acres in Oregon. A project from the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District aims to make sure that doesn’t happen here.

In late August, environmental scientist Laura Rogers-Bennett was driving back to Bodega Bay after conducting ocean surveys in Mendocino when she saw “dark-coffee-colored water” north of Salt Point State Park. Within days, dead sea stars, abalones, urchins, and chitons were piling up on area beaches.

As I write this on Thanksgiving weekend, I have many things to be grateful for. For example: On Thanksgiving morning, I watched a huge raft of cormorants take off from the surface of the Bay in front of Angel Island. But behind such moments and places of great beauty, several dark clouds are gathering.

A Petaluma farm is adapting the methods of farming popularized in The Omnivore’s Dilemma to the West Coast climate. The animals work all year round, preparing the soil in the fields for the spring planting.

The Los Altos History Museum puts a local spin on California’s epic tale of water in a new exhibit. Shaped by Water guides visitors past an artesian well to art installations depicting today’s water use. Did you know the average Santa Clara County resident uses 153 gallons of water a day?

It may not be the most bucolic locale, but Alameda County’s backyard, parks, and city scapes are nesting spots for 175 bird species. A decade effort to track them down has resulted in the Alameda County Breeding Bird Atlas, released this week.

In the past, a consumer had mainly two choices: real or artificial. Another voice has joined the debate over the “best” Christmas tree. “Sustainable” trees have hit holiday stands to become a viable option for green consumers. But what does the label “sustainable” mean and are these trees worth the premium price?

The new Marin ordinance restricts the number of trees residents can cut down a year from five to two. But salmon advocates say it doesn’t go far enough in protecting mature trees that are crucial to fish habitat.

Some say it’s a “military style” operation, and surely the level of expertise in the field can be intimidating. But the Christmas Bird Count is also great fun for normally solitary birders and a chance to grow the next generation of naturalists.

After one solar company proposed covering 2,000 acres of open space in eastern Alameda County, county planning officials are preparing a new solar policy that will take into account environmental concerns like the loss of wildlife habitat. The debate is the latest in a series of clashes nationwide between green power and conservation.

From whale-watching expeditions to wildflower forays to the annual Christmas Bird Count, naturalist David Wimpfheimer takes great pleasure in leading people on what he likes to call natural “treasure hunts.”

The San Francisco garter snake and its food of choice, the California red-legged frog, may get new landlords at their wetland home, the San Francisco-owned Sharp Park in Pacifica, if the board of supervisors passes legislation today that would clear the way for a transfer of its management to the National Park Service.

When Europeans arrived at what is now Pinnacles National Monument, the land was not exactly a “pristine” or “untouched” vision of nature, but rather a managed ecosystem that itself had become dependent on fires set by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. Scientists are studying the traditional fire practices to help the ecosystem build greater resilience to major disturbances like climate change.

The Beach Chalet Athletic Fields may not seem like an ecological oasis, but environmentalists are fighting a San Francisco plan to replace natural grass with artificial turf. They say the move would turn foraging grounds into the ecological equivalent of a parking lot. City officials say the fake grass is needed to help it meet growing recreational needs.

Nothing heralds autumn and the holiday season like the evocative sound of geese, honking their way South on a blast of Arctic air. But many Canada geese now skip the annual migration and set up permanent shop in the Bay Area by taking advantage of the abundant food and absence of predators. That’s requiring some wildlife managers to come up with creative ways to remove these feathered friends.

Making the most of a popular Thanksgiving dish and Native American agricultural traditions, students at Frank Havens School planted a “Three Sisters” garden. The fifth-graders planted squash, corn and beans together – known as succotash — in an effort to demonstrate how the plants help each other grow without the need of chemicals and how, when combined, provide complete nutrition.

Four surfboard-sized vehicles set sail off the coast of the San Francisco Bay on Thursday in an attempt to break world records in ocean exploration and robotics. The “wave gliders” will, if successful, traverse the longest distance of any unmanned ocean craft as they cross the Pacific Ocean.

Panelists at a sold-out forum on November 16 talked about their farming and farm-education enterprises on the San Mateo Coast, San Francisco, West Marin, and Santa Rosa. From food sovereignty to occupying your foodshed, check out the highlights.

Dominik Mosur takes birds very seriously. He’s out daily birding around San Francisco, and he even works with injured birds and other wildlife at the Randall Museum. And now he’s officially SF’s champion birder: He’s already broken the one-year record of species sightings, and he’s got almost two months to keeping racking up species.

To some, daylight saving time means losing an hour of sunshine. But to Crissy Field Park Ranger Fatima Colindres, it means more opportunities to explore the night. Twilight walks are among the park’s most popular activities, and Colindres treks with groups under the dark sky twice a month.

Urban Adamah is a one-acre farm and Jewish environmental education center that recently opened in West Berkeley, just a stone’s throw from Interstate 80. Named for the Hebrew word for “earth,” Urban Adamah provides local food banks and community organizations with fresh produce while accommodating 500 visitors a month.

A remarkable event happens every year along the Tuolumne River, but sadly, very few people know about it: Chinook salmon run up the river to their spawning grounds, and the canoes of the Tuolumne River Trust are there to meet them. You could join them this weekend.

A pod of humpback whales, about two or three families, adults with a few calves, have been dazzling whale-watchers since about October 18, as they feed in Monterrey Bay about a quarter of a mile from Santa Cruz Harbor. Calm waters, warm weather and an abundance of food like sardines, anchovies and other baitfish have produced the ideal whale visit.

This winter, the traffic bottlenecks around Santa Rosa might be a little easier to manage–at least if you happen to be a California tiger salamander. Santa Rosa’s population of tiger salamanders, declared endangered in 2000, will be able for the first time to get to breeding ponds through several special tunnels installed underneath busy roads.

The BayWood Artists, a group of plein air painters who often hold art sales to benefit local environmental groups, are dedicating their current show at the Bay Model in Sausalito to Save the Bay, which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year.

With a handful of very noticeable earthquakes jolting the East Bay, we’re getting a lot of questions about quakes — do small ones release strain? Or foretell the Big One? We get the word from one of UC Berkeley’s top seismologists.

Beth Huning’s current position as Coordinator of the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture isn’t her first role in the field of wetlands conservation, but it certainly is one that brings together her passion for birds, her commitment to environmental protection, and her ability to work well with people representing many different constituencies. That’s essential when running a consortium of over 26 groups focused on San Francisco Bay’s tidal wetlands. Just this month the Joint Venture celebrated its 15th anniversary.

With last year’s wet winter and this fall’s early rains in October, time is short for the staff and volunteers of the Salmon Protection and Restoration Network (SPAWN), who are working hard on several projects aimed at helping the Lagunitas Creek run of coho salmon — the largest remaining wild coho run in the state.

With Halloween right around the corner, it’s only natural to think of cobwebs and hairy creatures lurking in dark places. Just the thought of these creepy, crawling, eight-legged, web tangling, multi-eyed arachnids can frighten even the toughest individuals. Even yours truly. Luckily, the third installment of Sonoma State University’s Insecta-Palooza is here to remind us that these crawlers aren’t so creepy after all.

At first glance, Cullinan Ranch isn’t much to look at. Bound by Dutchman Slough to the north and Highway 37 to the south, the Solano County property consists of 1,500 acres of low-lying fields. But this former farmland is about to become the largest restored marsh in the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

On October 9, 805 teams of two, 100 individuals, and 220 children, along with hundreds of volunteers from local civic organizations, a crack team of event organizers, and thousands of cheering fans gathered at Joseph D. Grant County Park in the Mount Hamilton area of San Jose. They came to run. They came to bike. They came to get dirty.

Two decades ago, parts of Claremont Canyon burned in one of the largest wildfires the Bay Area has ever seen. Since then, neighbors have steadily worked to make themselves at home in a fire-prone landscape.

The Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art is honoring California landscape painter William Keith a century after his death with 150 paintings from the college’s permanent collection. “The Comprehensive Keith: A Centennial Tribute,” on view through December 18, 2011, includes dozens of Bay Area views, from Pacheco Pass to San Anselmo. Some are startlingly familiar. Others are lost to roads and subdivisions. All will help you see local nature with new eyes.

Two air tour operators got a provisional green light for low-flying air tours over the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes. Meanwhile, a long-term Air Tour Management Plan is in the works. As the October 21 public comment deadline approaches, some environmentalists say air tours have no place in parks, while tour operators say they offer access to people who might not otherwise see the parks.

Global climate models are critical to understanding climate change, but they don’t tell us anything about changing temperatures and other surface level changes in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is what we need to know to plan for our future. A new model for the North Bay creates a closeup view critical for watershed managers. And soon the model will expand to cover all of California, 18 acres at a time.

In eastern Contra Costa and Alameda counties, an ambitious vision for protecting big pieces of remaining open space is taking shape: From Black Diamond Mines and Mount Diablo to Brushy Peak and Sunol, several major agreements promise to replace ad hoc mitigation projects with a broader canvas of protected and connected habitat.

The hawk trackers of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory go way beyond birding: These citizen scientists take to the highways and back roads, following radio-tagged birds that may roam just to the next valley, or all the way to Mexico. Along the way, the hawk trackers have contributed much to our knowledge of these well-traveled birds.

The Peninsula Open Space Trust has opened three more miles of the California Coastal Trail, which someday may run the entire 1,200-mile length of the coast. For now, there’s a great hike to be had between ocean cliffs and farm fields south of Half Moon Bay.

A new report on the state of bird populations shows mixed results for Bay Area populations. People continue to be the biggest threat, with habitat loss and other pressures, and the biggest hope, in the form of major and minor restoration projects all around the Bay.

Researchers plan to head out this winter looking for micro-plastic in the Bay. Their first-ever trawl last winter turned up concentrations that actually weren’t as bad as some recorded in other waterways. But that might just mean we’re sending more plastic to the Pacific.

If it’s a Saturday morning, you’re more than likely to find me doing one of two things: visiting some wild place for nature-related recreation or biking to the Berkeley Farmers’ Market. The melee of colors and the medley of shapes of the fruits and vegetables, the diversity and energy of the shoppers, the opportunity to […]

Bayer Farm brings open space and food security to a section of Santa Rosa that needs more of both. With help from the nonprofit Landpaths, people in the Roseland neighborhood are helping each other plant and harvest food, and community.

In the Sunol Valley, beyond the subdivisions of Pleasanton, Fred Hempel grows tomatoes alongside other farmers growing figs, strawberries, and more. It’s all part of an unusual experiment in micro-farming unfolding under the leadership of Sustainable Agriculture Education on land owned by the San Francisco water department.

For more than a century, Jeanne McCormack’s family has grown grain and raised livestock on a few thousand acres near Rio Vista. But she and her husband Al Medvitz didn’t take a straight line to ranching. Instead, they detoured through Africa and Asia. Now, they’re in it for the long haul.

By Miles O. Hayes and Jacqueline Michel, Pandion Books, distributed by Heyday, 2010, 352 pages, $29.95. It’s hard to argue with the claim by the South Carolina-based authors of A Coast to Explore that “the shoreline of Central California is without a doubt the most beautiful in all the ‘lower forty-eight’ states.” And with that, […]

By Laure Latham, The Mountaineers Books, 2011, 364 pages, $19.95. Hiking with kids can seem daunting, but Laure Latham is an expert. Her new book is filled with ways to turn what can sometimes feel like a forced march into a fun outing, and every hiker will find inspiration in her lively trail descriptions. She […]

Photos by Stephen Joseph, text by Linda Rimac Colberg, Mount Diablo Interpretive Association, 2010, 266 pages, $50. Photographer Stephen Joseph has amassed a wide-ranging body of work–from a project to photograph Bay Area farms (see his photos in this issue) to images of John Muir’s plant specimens (on display at the Oakland Museum). But the […]

By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto and Kathleen M. Wong, 2011, UC Press, 352 pages, $24.95 paperback, $65 hardcover. The latest installment of the UC Press Natural History series (number 102!) comes from frequent Bay Nature contributors Ariel Rubissow Okamoto and Kathleen Wong. Like many “guides” in the series, this one is carefully researched, well written, and […]

By Laurence R. Costello, Bruce W. Hagen, and Katherine S. Jones, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu), 2011, 265 pages, $55. As Californians continue moving into woodlands, we are loving our oak trees to death. Many native oaks are killed during construction, and those that survive too often succumb to inappropriate gardening practices. But it […]

Pease Press Maps (peasepress.com), 2010, double-sided foldout map, $7.95. Whether you’re looking for a new lunch-break stroll or an all-day weekend hike, this map provides useful information that even a native can appreciate. You may be surprised by the multitude of protected hills and peaks in the city, many giving you million-dollar views. The map […]

By Tom Courtney, Wilderness Press, 2011, 234 pages, $16.95. Imagine hiking from inn to inn carrying only a day pack, following a beautiful trail with a nice meal and room at its end. The Alps or the south of France? Perhaps. But you could also be in Northern California: Think Point Reyes or Monterey Bay. […]

On a stormy winter night in 2004, as the merchant ship Med Taipei plowed southbound off the coast of Monterey in 20- to 30-foot swells, 15 shipping containers slid into the sea. Such occurrences aren’t especially newsworthy–an estimated 10,000 containers are lost every year worldwide. But these containers are now part of an important research project.

Alameda County is facing tough decisions that have until now been mostly debated in distant desert landscapes. The county is developing new regulations covering large-scale solar. Native plant advocates and farmers and ranchers aim to make sure the policies protect sensitive habitats and high-value ag lands.

In an alarming poll conducted by the Nature Conservancy, only ten percent of kids said they’re spending time outside everyday. That’s no typo folks, a whopping ten percent! Before you shut off your computer and run outside, check out our list of top kid-friendly picks from our events calendar in October!

Marine scientists gathering data off the Golden Gate have zeroed in on a number of hotspots of biodiversity, including transects north and south of the Farallon Islands. Turns out, though, that even hot spots aren’t so hot when a toxic red tide rolls in.

On a 55-acre lot in Antioch, a few biologists and a crew of volunteers are waging a battle to protect a vanishing bit of the natural world. The cause isn’t easily seen: No whales are threatened and the public isn’t in danger of losing a grove of old-growth redwoods. Instead, an endangered and rapidly dwindling species of butterfly teeters on the brink of extinction. And this week, you can help.

Nature doesn’t disappear when the sun goes down–there’s a whole universe out there to explore after dark! If you don’t have your own telescope, you can look at stars, planets, and other astronomical objects through big telescopes at observatories and smaller, portable telescopes at star parties or see them in dazzling indoor planetarium shows. People who share their love of astronomy and stargazing with others are friendly by nature.

Even before Woodie Guthrie sang “This land is your land…,” Americans had a solid history of maintaining and sharing public lands. September 24 brings this value into sharp focus: The annual National Public Lands Day is the largest assembly of volunteer effort on behalf of public lands in history. We’ll help you get in on the action!

A new study finds flooding and episodic storm events could result in an estimated $20 million in damages by 2100. And accelerated landward erosion from an estimated 1.4-meter rise in sea-level by 2100 could result in $540 million in damages. Along the way, we’d lose habitat for plovers and bank swallows and a favorite recreation spot for millions of people.

Most kids recognize the ring-tailed lemur only as the animated character King Julien from the feature cartoon Madagascar. In real life, this endangered, highly social primate is known for its vocal activity and sun bathing — and it will soon be one of many animals in San Francisco, waiting to meet kids ready to go beyond the DVD player.

Inspired by a childhood divided between urban Oakland and a Lake County working ranch, Rue Mapp founded Outdoor Afro, an online community and organization that reconnects African-Americans with natural spaces and one another through outdoor recreational activities.

The Golden Gate Bridge, approaching its 75th anniversary, is the most photographed bridge in the world — but what about what lies underneath it? Photographer David Liittschwager decided to address just that and discovered that the number of living things that pass through a cubic foot of water here in an hour is greater than the number of cars that have ever driven over it.

This Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, more than 80,000 people will hit the California coast for a not-so-typical day at the beach. Coastal Cleanup Day is right around the corner and the state’s largest volunteering event will likely net some 1.2 million pounds of trash. A staggering number indeed, which raises the question — How does all this debris end up on the shore?

Beware of pedestrians, San Francisco drivers, for they are taking back the streets on September 25. That’s when more than a hundred folks will be trekking a near half-marathon over 15 “peaks” through the urban fabric of San Francisco. It’s all part of the local nonprofit Walk San Francisco’s seventh-annual “Peak 2 Peak” walk, and spaces have filled up quickly this year.

If someone asked you to name the 26 states that offer certified “master naturalist” programs, there’s a good chance you’d class California among those. Until recently, you’d have been wrong. But, like Texas before us, we in the Golden State now finally have such a program.

Bay Area native Sue Gardner says her work on stewardship programs combines her two passions: people and nature. For almost 20 years, she’s been running innovative programs that get diverse groups of people out helping take care of the diverse habitats of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Facing a rodent problem? Before you head to the hardware store for rat poison, Alex Godby, founder of the nonprofit Hungry Owl Project (HOP), wants to persuade you that there are better ways to deal with rats and mice.